Part 31 (1/2)

VI

TURGENEV (1816-1883)

In Edward Garnett's admirable book on Turgenev Conrad lays his finger with unerring accuracy on the crux of the whole problem with regard to him when he says that we are apt to belittle a consummate artist who is quiet when we compare him with a t.i.tanic, restless genius like Dostoievsky. It is like comparing Jane Austen with Victor Hugo.

Incidentally Mr Garnett's book loses much of its value owing to his repeated endeavour to show Turgenev's superiority over Dostoievsky.

As a matter of fact, there is no comparison possible.

Turgenev came of n.o.ble birth and began by writing verse, but soon found his proper _metier_ in prose.

For two years he was exiled to his country estate for his quite harmless defence of Gogol. After this term was over he left Russia for Baden and Paris, which accounts to some extent for his aloofness from the problems which perturbed his countrymen, and makes him more a Cosmopolitan than National, like Dostoievsky. His five great novels, _Rudin_, _The Nest of Gentlefolk_, _On the Eve_, _Fathers and Sons_ and _Smoke_, all appeared in the eleven years between 1856 and 1867 and he was at once appraised by all European critics, who discovered in him Russia for the first time, and the Russian woman in particular. His popularity at home was impaired on the publication of _Fathers and Sons_, because the revolutionaries saw in Bazarov, the hero, only calumny and a libel, whereas the reactionary party looked on the book as a glorification of Nihilism. Thus he fell between two stools. In Europe, however, he gained larger and larger audiences, until an admiration for his work became the hall-mark of good taste.

But to-day Turgenev holds his own even in his own country, for his exquisite style, the majesty of his poetry and the sureness of his characterisation. Baring finds a parallel to Turgenev in this country in Tennyson, in that they are both Mid-Victorian, both shut off from the world by the trees of old parks; but Major Baring, as it seems to me, is fair to neither genius.

For Turgenev has an amazing insight into men's motives and actions which we do not commonly a.s.sociate with those who are shut off from the world.

Rudin is a picture of a type that peculiarly appealed to Turgenev, the Hamlet type of man who can only unpack his heart with words, but breaks down when he is asked to translate his theories into action: he is pa.s.sionately devoted to Liberty in his eloquent talk and makes Natasha, the daughter of the house in which he is staying, fall madly in love with him and persuade herself that she is ready to fly with him, but he, whose love is more that of the intellect than the heart, fails her and tells her to submit.

He is eventually killed in '48 on a barricade in Paris. In the epilogue we get his character beautifully unfolded to us.

”'I know him well,' continued Lezhneff, 'I am aware of his faults. They are the more conspicuous because he is not to be regarded on a small scale.'

”'His is a character of genius!' cried Ba.s.sistoff.

”'Genius very likely he has!' replied Lezhneff, 'but as for character ... That's just his misfortune: there's no force of character in him....

But 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! It is high time! Do you remember, Sasha, once when I was talking to you about him, I blamed him for coldness? I was right, and wrong too, then. The coldness is in his blood--that is not his fault--and not in his head. 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.... Yes; no doubt he will die somewhere in poverty and want; but are we to throw stones at him for that? 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? Indeed, I myself, to begin with, have gained all that I have from him. Sasha knows what Rudin did for me in my youth. I also maintained, I recollect, that Rudin's words could not produce an effect on men; but I was speaking then of men like myself, at my present age, of men who have already lived and been broken in by life. One false note in a man's eloquence, and the whole harmony is spoiled for us; but a young man's ear, happily, is not so over-fine, not so trained. If the substance of what he hears seems fine to him, what does he care about the intonation? The intonation he will supply for himself!'

”'Bravo, bravo!' cried Ba.s.sistoff, 'that is justly spoken! And as regards Rudin's influence, I swear to you, that man not only knows how to move you, he lifts you up; he does not let you stand still, he stirs you to the depths and sets you on fire!'”

In _A n.o.bleman's Retreat_ we find a man, Lavretsiy by name, separated from his wife, who meets a good, honest girl, by name Liza: they fall in love with one another: for a moment they are led to believe that his wife is dead, but she reappears and Liza goes to a convent.

But it is in the next two novels, _On the Eve_ and _Fathers and Sons_, that we see Turgenev at his best.

_On the Eve_ is a deep and penetrating diagnosis of the destinies of the Russia of the fifties.

The central figure of the novel is Elena, who comes near to being the most completely successful heroine in all fiction. We know her through and through, and she is, as are all Turgenev's heroines, well worth knowing. ”Her strength of will, her serious, courageous, proud soul, her capacity for pa.s.sion, all the play of her delicate idealistic nature troubled by the contradictions, aspirations, and unhappiness that the dawn of love brings to her, all this is conveyed to us by the simplest and the most consummate art.” Her confession (in her diary) of her discovery that she loved the Bulgarian Insarov is in itself an amazing revelation of the working of a young girl's heart. Every side of her nature is shown us. We see her from her father's point of view, which is contemptuous; from her mother's, which is that of affectionate bewilderment; from one of her lovers (Shubin's), which is petulantly critical; from another of her lovers (Bevsenyev's), which is halfhearted enthralment; from Insarov's, which recognises her greatness of soul and sincerity of purpose.

Turgenev's magnificent clear-sightedness never manifests itself so sustainedly as in this book. Not only does each of the characters breathe and move and live from the first page, but politically too the author precisely hits off with his pen the Russian temperament. Of all the great Russian writers he is the least diffuse, the most of an artist. He is, after all, as he himself confessed, not so much a Russian as a cosmopolitan, a citizen of Europe, and it is his mission to stand aloof and describe with absolute impartiality the various types that come before his eye without seeking to make his puppets conform to his own ideas or using them as a peg on which to hang a thesis of his own.

The foundation of his art lies in his portraits of women. Pure, virginal, heroic, self-sacrificing, boundless in their love and devotion to a man or cause, they form a gallery worthy to be set by the side of Shakespeare's and Meredith's heroines. They are very flesh and blood, very woman, and yet altogether fascinating, adorable, steadfast, superbly endowed with all the gifts that make for n.o.bility of soul.

Over the creation of these Turgenev showed himself to be deeply sensitive, responsive to all that is best in the feminine mind, of shrewd insight, unfailingly generous, absolutely sane and level-headed.

So perfect is his sense of balance, so consummate his artistry, that his work has been unduly depreciated by some critics: they do not easily forgive perfection of form, absolute harmony of style, a sense of proportion so exquisitely poised as his.

He reminds us again of Meredith in his highly intellectual conception as in his portraits of women. He became almost uncannily prophetic in his utterances about the educated cla.s.ses and their ideals.

He is so interested in characterisation that he needs no incidents to show the growth of his characters: indeed we are almost taken aback by such a dramatic situation as that of the drunken German being thrown into the lake by Insarov. We feel that the play of character upon character is enough, without fortuitous circ.u.mstances of this sort ...