A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1 Read online

  But men must have some outlet for their spiritual energies, and these men, unable to take part in the sordid or petty pursuits of those around them, created for themselves artificial life, artificial pursuits and interests.

  The isolation in which they lived drew them naturally together. The ‘circle,’ something between an informal club and a debating society, became the form in which these cravings of mind or heart could be satisfied. These people met and talked; that was all they were able to do.

  The passage in which one of the heroes, Lezhnyov, tells the woman he loves about the circle of which Dmitri Rudin and himself were members, is historically one of the most suggestive. It refers to a circle of young students. But it has a wider application. All prominent men of the epoch — Stankevitch, who served as model to the poetic and touching figure of Pokorsky; Alexander Hertzen, and the great critic, Belinsky — all had their ‘circles,’ or their small chapels, in which these enthusiasts met to offer worship to the ‘goddess of truth, art, and morality.’

  They were the best men of their time, full of high aspirations and knowledge, and their disinterested search after truth was certainly a noble pursuit. They had full right to look down upon their neighbours wallowing in the mire of sordid and selfish materialism. But by living in that spiritual hothouse of dreams, philosophical speculations, and abstractions, these men unfitted themselves only the more completely for participation in real life; the absorption in interests having nothing to do with the life of their own country, estranged them still more from it. The overwhelming stream of words drained them of the natural sources of spontaneous emotion, and these men almost grew out of feeling by dint of constantly analysing their feelings.

  Dmitri Rudin is the typical man of that generation, both the victim and the hero of his time — a man who is almost a Titan in word and a pigmy in deed. He is eloquent as a young Demosthenes. An irresistible debater, he carries everything before him the moment he appears. But he fails ignominiously when put to the hard test of action. Yet he is not an impostor. His enthusiasm is contagious because it is sincere, and his eloquence is convincing because devotion to his ideals is an absorbing passion with him. He would die for them, and, what is more rare, he would not swerve a hair’s - breadth from them for any worldly advantage, or for fear of any hardship. Only this passion and this enthusiasm spring with him entirely from the head. The heart, the deep emotional power of human love and pity, lay dormant in him. Humanity, which he would serve to the last drop of his blood, is for him a body of foreigners — French, English, Germans — whom he has studied from books, and whom he has met only in hotels and watering - places during his foreign travels as a student or as a tourist.

  Towards such an abstract, alien humanity, a man cannot feel any real attachment. With all his outward ardour, Rudin is cold as ice at the bottom of his heart. His is an enthusiasm which glows without warmth, like the aurora borealis of the Polar regions. A poor substitute for the bountiful sun. But what would have become of a God - forsaken land if the Arctic nights were deprived of that substitute? With all their weaknesses, Rudin and the men of his stamp — in other words, the men of the generation of 1840 — have rendered an heroic service to their country. They inculcated in it the religion of the ideal; they brought in the seeds, which had only to be thrown into the warm furrow of their native soil to bring forth the rich crops of the future.

  The shortcomings and the impotence of these men were due to their having no organic ties with their own country, no roots in the Russian soil. They hardly knew the Russian people, who appeared to them as nothing more than an historic abstraction. They were really cosmopolitan, as a poor makeshift for something better, and Turgenev, in making his hero die on a French barricade, was true to life as well as to art.

  The inward growth of the country has remedied this defect in the course of the three generations which have followed. But has the remedy been complete? No; far from it, unfortunately. There are still thousands of barriers preventing the Russians from doing something useful for their countrymen and mixing freely with them. The spiritual energies of the most ardent are still compelled — partially at least — to run into the artificial channels described in Turgenev’s novel.

  Hence the perpetuation of Rudin’s type, which acquires more than an historical interest.

  In discussing the character of Hlestakov, the hero of his great comedy, Gogol declared that this type is pretty nigh universal, because ‘every Russian,’ he says, ‘has a bit of Hlestakov in him.’ This not very flattering opinion has been humbly indorsed and repeated since, out of reverence to Gogol’s great authority, although it is untrue on the face of it. Hlestakov is a sort of Tartarin in Russian dress, whilst simplicity and sincerity are the fundamental traits of all that is Russian in character, manner, art, literature. But it may be truly said that every educated Russian of our time has a bit of Dmitri Rudin in him.

  This figure is undoubtedly one of the finest in Turgenev’s gallery, and it is at the same time one of the most brilliant examples of his artistic method.

  Turgenev does not give us at one stroke sculptured figures made from one block, such as rise before us from Tolstoi’s pages. His art is rather that of a painter or musical composer than of a sculptor. He has more colour, a deeper perspective, a greater variety of lights and shadows — a more complete portraiture of the spiritual man. Tolstoi’s people stand so living and concrete that one feels one can recognise them in the street. Turgenev’s are like people whose intimate confessions and private correspondence, unveiling all the secrets of their spiritual life, have been submitted to one.

  Every scene, almost every line, opens up new deep horizons, throwing upon his people some new unexpected light.

  The extremely complex and difficult character of the hero of this story, shows at its highest this subtle psychological many - sidedness. Dmitri Rudin is built up of contradictions, yet not for a moment does he cease to be perfectly real, living, and concrete.

  Hardly less remarkable is the character of the heroine, Natalya, the quiet, sober, matter - of - fact girl, who at the bottom is an enthusiastic and heroic nature. She is but a child fresh to all impressions of life, and as yet undeveloped. To have used the searching, analytical method in painting her would have spoiled this beautiful creation. Turgenev describes her synthetically by a few masterly lines, which show us, however, the secrets of her spirit; revealing what she is and also what she might have become under other circumstances.

  This character deserves more attention than we can give it here. Turgenev, like George Meredith, is a master in painting women, and his Natalya is the first poetical revelation of a very striking fact in modern Russian history; the appearance of women possessing a strength of mind more finely masculine than that of the men of their time. By the side of weak, irresolute, though highly intellectual men we see in his first three novels energetic, earnest, impassioned women, who take the lead in action, whilst they are but the man’s modest pupils in the domain of ideas. Only later on, in Fathers and Children, does Turgenev show us in Bazarov a man essentially masculine. But of this interesting peculiarity of Russian intellectual life, in the years 1840 to 1860, I will speak more fully when analysing another of Turgenev’s novels in which this contrast is most conspicuous.

  I will say nothing of the minor characters of the story before us: Lezhnyov, Pigasov, Madame Lasunsky, Pandalevsky, who are all excellent examples of what may be called miniature - painting.

  As to the novel as a whole, I will make here only one observation, not to forestall the reader’s own impressions.

  Turgenev is a realist in the sense that he keeps close to reality, truth, and nature. But in the pursuit of photographic faithfulness to life, he never allows himself to be tedious and dull, as some of the best representatives of the school think it incumbent upon them to be. His descriptions are never overburdened with wearisome details; his action is rapid; the events are never to be foreseen a hundred pages beforehand; he keeps his readers in
constant suspense. And it seems to me in so doing he shows himself a better realist than the gifted representatives of the orthodox realism in France, England, and America. Life is not dull; life is full of the unforeseen, full of suspense. A novelist, however natural and logical, must contrive to have it in his novels if he is not to sacrifice the soul of art for the merest show of fidelity.

  The plot of Dmitri Rudin is so exceedingly simple that an English novel - reader would say that there is hardly any plot at all. Turgenev disdained the tricks of the sensational novelists. Yet, for a Russian at least, it is easier to lay down before the end a novel by Victor Hugo or Alexander Dumas than Dmitri Rudin, or, indeed, any of Turgenev’s great novels. What the novelists of the romantic school obtain by the charm of unexpected adventures and thrilling situations, Turgenev succeeds in obtaining by the brisk admirably concentrated action, and, above all, by the simplest and most precious of a novelist’s gifts: his unique command over the sympathies and emotions of his readers. In this he can be compared to a musician who works upon the nerves and the souls of his audience without the intermediary of the mind; or, better still, to a poet who combines the power of the word with the magic spell of harmony. One does not read his novels; one lives in them.

  Much of this peculiar gift of fascination is certainly due to Turgenev’s mastery over all the resources of our rich, flexible, and musical language. The poet Lermontov alone wrote as splendid a prose as Turgenev. A good deal of its charm is unavoidably lost in translation. But I am happy to say that the present one is as near an approach to the elegance and poetry of the original as I have ever come across.

  S. STEPNIAK.

  BEDFORD PARK, April 20, 1894.

  THE NAMES OF THE CHARACTERS IN ‘RUDIN’

  DMITRI NIKOLA’ITCH RU’DIN.

  DAR - YA MIHA’ILOVNA LASU’NSKY.

  NATA’L - YA ALEX - YE’VNA.

  MIHA’ILO MIHA’ILITCH LE’ZH - NYOV (MISHA).

  ALEXANDRA PA’VLOVNA LI’PIN (SASHA).

  SERGEI (pron, Sergay) PA’VLITCH VOLI’NT - SEV (SEREZHA).

  KONSTANTIN DIOMIDITCH PANDALE’VSKY.

  AFRICAN SEME’NITCH PIGA’SOV.

  BASSI’STOFF.

  MLLE. BONCOURT.

  I

  IT was a quiet summer morning. The sun stood already pretty high in the clear sky but the fields were still sparkling with dew; a fresh breeze blew fragrantly from the scarce awakened valleys and in the forest, still damp and hushed, the birds were merrily carolling their morning song. On the ridge of a swelling upland, which was covered from base to summit with blossoming rye, a little village was to be seen. Along a narrow by - road to this little village a young woman was walking in a white muslin gown, and a round straw hat, with a parasol in her hand. A page boy followed her some distance behind.

  She moved without haste and as though she were enjoying the walk. The high nodding rye all round her moved in long softly rustling waves, taking here a shade of silvery green and there a ripple of red; the larks were trilling overhead. The young woman had come from her own estate, which was not more than a mile from the village to which she was turning her steps. Her name was Alexandra Pavlovna Lipin. She was a widow, childless, and fairly well off, and lived with her brother, a retired cavalry officer, Sergei Pavlitch Volintsev. He was unmarried and looked after her property.

  Alexandra Pavlovna reached the village and, stopping at the last hut, a very old and low one, she called up the boy and told him to go in and ask after the health of its mistress. He quickly came back accompanied by a decrepit old peasant with a white beard.

  ‘Well, how is she?’ asked Alexandra Pavlovna.

  ‘Well, she is still alive,’ began the old man.

  ‘Can I go in?’

  ‘Of course; yes.’

  Alexandra Pavlovna went into the hut. It was narrow, stifling, and smoky inside. Some one stirred and began to moan on the stove which formed the bed. Alexandra Pavlovna looked round and discerned in the half darkness the yellow wrinkled face of the old woman tied up in a checked handkerchief. Covered to the very throat with a heavy overcoat she was breathing with difficulty, and her wasted hands were twitching.

  Alexandra Pavlovna went close up to the old woman and laid her fingers on her forehead; it was burning hot.

  ‘How do you feel, Matrona?’ she inquired, bending over the bed.

  ‘Oh, oh!’ groaned the old woman, trying to make her out, ‘bad, very bad, my dear! My last hour has come, my darling!’

  ‘God is merciful, Matrona; perhaps you will be better soon. Did you take the medicine I sent you?’

  The old woman groaned painfully, and did not answer. She had hardly heard the question.

  ‘She has taken it,’ said the old man who was standing at the door.

  Alexandra Pavlovna turned to him.

  ‘Is there no one with her but you?’ she inquired.

  ‘There is the girl — her granddaughter, but she always keeps away. She won’t sit with her; she’s such a gad - about. To give the old woman a drink of water is too much trouble for her. And I am old; what use can I be?’

  ‘Shouldn’t she be taken to me — to the hospital?’

  ‘No. Why take her to the hospital? She would die just the same. She has lived her life; it’s God’s will now seemingly. She will never get up again. How could she go to the hospital? If they tried to lift her up, she would die.’

  ‘Oh!’ moaned the sick woman, ‘my pretty lady, don’t abandon my little orphan; our master is far away, but you — — ’

  She could not go on, she had spent all her strength in saying so much.

  ‘Do not worry yourself,’ replied Alexandra Pavlovna, ‘everything shall be done. Here is some tea and sugar I have brought you. If you can fancy it you must drink some. Have you a samovar, I wonder?’ she added, looking at the old man.

  ‘A samovar? We haven’t a samovar, but we could get one.’

  ‘Then get one, or I will send you one. And tell your granddaughter not to leave her like this. Tell her it’s shameful.’

  The old man made no answer but took the parcel of tea and sugar with both hands.

  ‘Well, good - bye, Matrona!’ said Alexandra Pavlovna, ‘I will come and see you again; and you must not lose heart but take your medicine regularly.’

  The old woman raised her head and drew herself a little towards Alexandra Pavlovna.

  ‘Give me your little hand, dear lady,’ she muttered.

  Alexandra Pavlovna did not give her hand; she bent over her and kissed her on the forehead.

  ‘Take care, now,’ she said to the old man as she went out, ‘and give her the medicine without fail, as it is written down, and give her some tea to drink.’

  Again the old man made no reply, but only bowed.

  Alexandra Pavlovna breathed more freely when she came out into the fresh air. She put up her parasol and was about to start homewards, when suddenly there appeared round the corner of a little hut a man about thirty, driving a low racing droshky and wearing an old overcoat of grey linen, and a foraging cap of the same. Catching sight of Alexandra Pavlovna he at once stopped his horse and turned round towards her. His broad and colourless face with its small light grey eyes and almost white moustache seemed all in the same tone of colour as his clothes.

  ‘Good - morning!’ he began, with a lazy smile; ‘what are you doing here, if I may ask?’

  ‘I have been visiting a sick woman... And where have you come from, Mihailo Mihailitch?’

  The man addressed as Mihailo Mihailitch looked into her eyes and smiled again.

  ‘You do well,’ he said, ‘to visit the sick, but wouldn’t it be better for you to take her into the hospital?’

  ‘She is too weak; impossible to move her.’

  ‘But don’t you intend to give up your hospital?’

  ‘Give it up? Why?’

  ‘Oh, I thought so.’

  ‘What a strange notion! What put such an idea into your head?’

  ‘Oh, you
are always with Madame Lasunsky now, you know, and seem to be under her influence. And in her words — hospitals, schools, and all that sort of things, are mere waste of time — useless fads. Philanthropy ought to be entirely personal, and education too, all that is the soul’s work... that’s how she expresses herself, I believe. From whom did she pick up that opinion I should like to know?’

  Alexandra Pavlovna laughed.

  ‘Darya Mihailovna is a clever woman, I like and esteem her very much; but she may make mistakes, and I don’t put faith in everything she says.’

  ‘And it’s a very good thing you don’t,’ rejoined Mihailo Mihailitch, who all the while remained sitting in his droshky, ‘for she doesn’t put much faith in what she says herself. I’m very glad I met you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s a nice question! As though it wasn’t always delightful to meet you? To - day you look as bright and fresh as this morning.’

  Alexandra Pavlovna laughed again.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’

  ‘What, indeed! If you could see with what a cold and indifferent face you brought out your compliment! I wonder you didn’t yawn over the last word!’

  ‘A cold face.... You always want fire; but fire is of no use at all. It flares and smokes and goes out.’

  ‘And warms,’... put in Alexandra Pavlovna.

  ‘Yes... and burns.’

  ‘Well, what if it does burn! That’s no great harm either! It’s better anyway than — — ’

  ‘Well, we shall see what you will say when you do get nicely burnt one day,’ Mihailo Mihailitch interrupted her in a tone of vexation and made a cut at the horse with the reins, ‘Good - bye.’

  ‘Mihailo Mihailitch, stop a minute!’ cried Alexandra Pavlovna, ‘when are you coming to see us?’