III.
After reading what has gone before, I trust that no one will be inclined to see a mere paradox in this affirmation: Turgénief was above all things interested in the question of politics and social order, and of this interest were born all his great works. This was the reason that Turgénief’s writings so stirred the public: hence the favor of his readers at first was, enthusiastic; hence came notorious alienation, irritation, almost calumnious fury, from the time when the public and the author no longer advanced with equal steps towards progress. For, here is the point to be noted: Turgénief never ceased to make progress; but as long as he walked slowly, with regular steps, like a man who holds aloof from the popular current, and is not dragged along against his will by the rising tide of the throng, the masses of the nation—I mean the majority of the educated classes—no longer regulated his gait, and, seeing him each day a little farther behind them, imagined that he was retrograding or was not following. Turgénief was advancing, and he went to great lengths. Let us see how great was the distance between “The Annals of a Sportsman” and “Virgin Soil.”
Turgénief somewhere expressed his sympathy and admiration for Don Quixote. He contrasted him with the dreamer Hamlet, in whom he took little stock. Did not he himself enter the career of letters like a knight-errant (campeador) in the lists? From the very beginning, when he had won all the glory of a victor, he gave his young talent to the service of the right and of truth; he turned his pen, like a sword, against egotism, against injustice, against prejudice,—in a word, against the different forms of error. His maiden book, “The Annals of a Sportsman,” was not merely a literary event: it brought about a political revolution. This picture of the wretched condition of the serfs contributed in large measure to call forth the ukaz that enfranchised Russia.
It was not the first time that fiction had attacked the social question. Gogol had already struck the first blow against the enemy which Turgénief had the honor of defeating. But the author of “Dead Souls” had laid himself out especially to depict the faults and foibles of the small Russian proprietors; and, while he made it sufficiently evident how miserable was the condition of the serfs under their grotesque or detestable tyranny, his book left the unfortunate muzhik in the background. Turgénief’s originality consisted in placing this pariah in full light. He dared to show not only his pity but his affection for the Russian peasant, often narrow-minded, ignorant, or brutal, but good at heart. He undertook to reveal to the Russians this being which they scarcely knew.
In the very first pages of his book he showed him with his instinctive qualities; and for this reason he took pains to place him in an exceptional condition, that is to say, in that sort of relative independence occasionally realized in spite of, or by favor of, the law. Khor and Kalinuitch are accordingly almost freed from the actual miseries of serfage,—the first by living in the midst of a swamp, avoiding statute labor by paying a quit-rent (obrok); the second by serving as whipper-in for his master, whom he passionately adores. The former is a muzhik, who has the feeling of reality, “who is settled in life;” the other is a dreamer, “who sticks to nothing, and smiles at all things.” Khor the cautious has carefully observed men and things, and his experiences are expressed with that humorous naïveté which gives such a color to the conversation of the Russian peasant. Kalinuitch the enthusiast has the inspired language of a poet. He is largely endowed with mysterious powers. The bees obey him as though he were an enchanter. Both of them are good. The one is devout and gentle; the other, simply cordial and hospitable. There is profit in listening to the former, and pleasure in holding intercourse with the latter. Under these features Turgénief pictured the Russian of the country districts. After showing him, so to speak, in his native state, he went on to explain the deformities from which the type was liable to suffer under the brutalizing influences of serfdom.
The first alteration of the character of the Russian muzhik is a sort of ferocious, even savage, humor, which takes the place of the original reason or ingenuity. The huntsman Yermolaï offers us a curious example of this reversion to barbarism, of this return of the muzhik towards the savage state. Emancipated in the manner of an outlaw, of a bandit, he lives in the woods or the marsh, sleeping on a roof, under a bridge, in the crotch of a tree, hunted down by the peasants like a hare, beaten sometimes like a dog, but, aside from these trials, enjoying to the full this strange independence. He does not support his wife or his dog, both of whom he beats with the same brutal indifference. He has all the instincts of the beast of prey in scenting game, in trapping birds, in catching fish. He already possesses the shrewdness of the savage: he would easily acquire his cruelty. “I did not like the expression which came over his face when he applied his teeth to the bird he had just brought to earth.”
However precarious and anxious this independent life may be, it appears very enviable when compared to the torment and degradations of slavery. The muzhik Vlas walks all the way to Moscow, where he comes to ask a reduction in his quit-rent; for his son who paid it for him is dead, and he himself is old. The barin slams the door in his face, with the words, “How do you dare to come to me?” Vlas sadly returns to his hut, where his wife is waiting for him, blowing in her fist from starvation. “His lip is drawn, and in his little bloodshot eyes stands a tear.” He suddenly bursts out into a laugh, thinking that they can’t take any thing more from him than his life,—“a wretched pledge,”—and that that damned German, the prikashchik Quintilian Semenitch, “will shuffle in vain:” that’s all he’ll get. That tear of anguish, and that desperate laugh, are never to be forgotten.
Here are other impressions not less cruel. The serf Sutchok, now employed at his trade of fisherman, tells how he began by working as a cook; and how, in changing his profession, according as he went from master to master, he found himself successively cook, restaurant-keeper, actor, then back to his ovens again, then wearing livery as sub-footman, then postilion, then huntsman, then cobbler, then journeyman in a paper-mill. These caprices of the mastership which weighs upon the muzhik have not only their ridiculous side: there is always something detestable about it. The last owner of this wretch, whose life is only an irksome apprenticeship, is an old maid, who vents her spleen at having been left in single-blessedness by forbidding all her household to marry. This abasement of a human being, condemned by his master to isolation, to barrenness, like a beast, is powerfully shown in the little tale entitled “Yermolaï and the Miller Girl.”
But what seems still more painful than the slavery itself is to see that it is endured with resignation, and sometimes even upheld, excused, by those who have to submit to it. “How do you live?” is asked of one of these victims of feudal despotism. “Do you get wages, a fixed salary?”—“A salary! Ekh! barin, we are given our victuals. Indeed, that’s all we need, God knows! And may Heaven grant long life to our baruina!” Another has just been tremendously flogged. He treats with very bad grace the stranger who presumes to express commiseration; he takes the part of the master who has so cruelly abused him for a trifle; he is proud of belonging to a man who makes strict use of his seignorial prerogatives. “No, no! there is not a barin like to him in the whole province!”
Turgénief does not confine himself to the expression of pity for the muzhiks: he is unsparing of the nobles. With what irony he depicts for us their false sentimentality, their detestable selfishness! How he lays his finger on their absurdities! How he scourges their cruelty! How he lays bare their hypocrisy! They all appear in the book, from the narrow and cringing citizen, to the cynically brutal country pomyeshchik, from the gentlemen of the steppe (stepniaks) up to the vanished nobles, those legendary vyelmozhui, personified in Count Alekséï Orlof, so handsome, so strong, so terrible, and at the same time so beloved! “If you were not acquainted with him, you would feel abashed; but after getting wonted to his presence, you felt warmed and delighted as by a beautiful sunrise.” The author finds in this vanished aristocracy the rather barbaric form of his own grandfather, and he cannot refrain here from a sort of admiration. It is true, that small men have a sympathy very differently marked for these ostentatious giants of the olden days. Besides, is it not enough that the author of “Annals of a Sportsman” makes no secret of the excesses committed by those of his race? Has he not the right to remember that the form of oppression has merely been changed, and that the serf is not less abused from falling from the mighty hands of the tyrants, into the hooked claws of tyrannical weaklings?
But the true tormentor of the serf was a man whose condition brought him nearest to the muzhik; the one who, more often than not, was himself only a muzhik polished up,—in other words, the representative of the proprietor, the superintendent (prikashchik), the burmistr. This subaltern master pays the peasant’s quit-rent until the latter, overwhelmed with debts, is absolutely in his power. He becomes his slave, his drudge. Now and then will be found in the woods the corpse of some wretch who has torn himself from this hell, by suicide. But what is the use of complaining? The proprietor receives his revenue, and is satisfied. And then the prikashchik has a thousand ways of getting hold of the fault-finder, and the wreaking of his vengeance brings a groan.
Proprietors, muzhiks, priskashchiks, all these characters strike, move, stir, by their fidelity to the truth. In a subject which lent itself so easily to declamation, the author succeeded in refraining from all excess of fine writing. This self-restraint in form gave greater force to the satire, and added weight to the argument. Besides, under the irony the bitterness was felt, and under the comic fervor was occasionally heard the rumbling of a generous wrath. Turgénief himself explained the feelings which animated him at this period of his life, which I would rather compare to the morning of a battle. He had just left Russia, the atmosphere of which seemed no longer fit to breathe. He went away to get a fresh start, so as to come back with a renewed impetus against his enemy serfage. “I swore that I would fight it even to the death; I vowed that I would never come to terms with it: that was my Hannibal’s oath.”
From one end of his work to the other, Turgénief never did aught else than thus reflect the feelings of the Russian people, express its hopes, note carefully, proclaim sincerely, all the forward and backward movements of opinion. In every one of his novels, there is to be found one person whose appearance, conduct, and worth may vary, but whose dominant characteristic holds throughout all changes. This personage, however alive he may be, serves to express an abstraction. He is, so to speak, the incarnation of the wishes, the fears, the claims, of the Russian people. Now, in Russia, as elsewhere, and still more than elsewhere, public opinion is undergoing constant modification: the novelist has followed with careful eye, and copied with accurate hand, all these rapid transformations.
In Dmitri Rudin, he depicts for us a lofty but inconsequential generation, eloquent, but lacking in depth, eager for every undertaking, but having no fixed purpose; as the youth of 1840 must have been, who had the power of speech, but were prevented from action.[36]
This was the epoch when there was a passion for words, and especially for words of foreign origin. Hegel’s philosophy frothed and foamed in these Russian brains, so little constituted for the digestion of metaphysical nutriment. But the fashion was for cosmopolitanism: they affected to scorn national habits; they dreamed only of going “beyond Russia.” Rudin, who personifies this error, was its first victim. At first he carries away, he rouses to enthusiasm, all whom he approaches; then his friends, his disciples, ultimately, sooner or later, turn against him. He succeeds in rousing only hatred, or exciting only distrust. Useless and inactive amid his own people, he goes to perish on a French barricade; and by a supreme but unconscious irony, the insurgent who fights at his side pronounces his funeral oration in these words: “Lo, they have killed our Pole!”
Is it true to say that the Rudins were of no advantage to their country? The author gives us to understand, that their words may have cast the germ of generous thoughts into more than one young soul to whom nature will not refuse the advantage of a fruitful activity.
To this same unfortunate family of forerunners, and to this same sacrificed but indispensable generation, belongs the character of Lavretsky in the romance entitled “A Nest of Noblemen.” Unlike Rudin, Lavretsky owes nothing to schooling. Scarcely does he have time for applying his simple and ingenuous mind to the acquisition of knowledge during the period between the moment when he escapes the durance of paternal despotism, and that when he takes upon him the more pleasing yoke of conjugal will. He therefore has remained Russian; he believes in the future of the national genius. He is lavish of himself, and of those of his age; but he admires the tendencies of the young, and he praises their endeavors. Departing from his country, happy, or at least under that delusion, he returns alone and crushed; but he has the consolation of doing his duty, that is to say, cultivating his estate, and improving the lot of his peasants. This unostentatious work of Lavretsky’s, better than Rudin’s brilliant declamations, pointed out to the rising generations what Russia henceforth expected from her sons: “You must act, and the benediction of us old men will fall upon you.”
But this period of action which they seem to be approaching will be postponed before the unanimous wishes of the novelist and the reader. In the book “On the Eve,” translated into French under the title “Hélène,”[37] the author’s aim is very evident. He contrasts two Russians with a Bulgarian; and the brilliant or solid qualities of the artist Shubin and the student Bersénief yield before the unique virtue of Insarof, a more common nature. This virtue of the barbarian is to go straight ahead; he does not delay for dreaming or discussion; there is nothing of the Hamlet about him. However strange be his ideal, however adventurous his lot, he carries with him Elena’s hesitating wisdom, just as Don Quixote overcame Sancho’s rebellious good sense. It is this decisiveness, this bold gait, this firm resolution not to fall back, and resolutely to emerge from the beaten path, which the author of “On the Eve” seems to hold up before the Russian people. But it might be said that he despaired of finding in his own country the man of action, destined to win the glory to come; and it was thus that the Russian critics explained his significant choice of a Bulgarian for the hero of his romance.
This ingenious explanation is not correct. Insarof and Elena have experienced life. This beautiful young Russian girl, who is anxious to devote herself to a noble cause, and who, not being able to die for her own country, clings to the lot of the foreigner who shows her the path of great sacrifices, was not a creature of Turgéniefs imagination. Not only did Elena exist, but there was a throng of Elenas who asked only for a chance to show themselves. This was seen as soon as the romance was published. All feminine hearts throbbed. One might say that the author had placed before the eyes of the virgins of Russia a mirror, where, for the first time, they were allowed to see themselves, and become conscious of their own existence. A few years later Elena would have had a chance to offer herself to Russia. She would have acted like Viéra Sasuluitch, or, not to go outside of fiction, like Marian in “Virgin Soil.”
In the famous novel “Fathers and Sons,” the young generation for the first time comes upon the scene. It is represented by the medical student Bazarof. Better to bring out his hero by a fortunate contrast, the author has put this brutal but thoroughly original plebeian face to face with a gentleman in whom are united all the qualities and the eccentricities of the conservative nobility. Again, it is German education which has fashioned Bazarof. But Hegel’s theories have given place to Schopenhauer’s; and Germanic pessimism, grafted on the Russian mind, has brought forth very strange fruit. The young men of whom Bazarof is a type are of the earth earthy, to the same degree as that generation of which Rudin was the shining example showed itself exalted. They have only one aim, action; they admit only one principle of action, utility; they see only one form of utility at the present time, absolute negation. “Yet isn’t it necessary to rebuild?—That does not concern us. Before all things we must clear the ground.”
Here, clearly formulated, is the theory of Nihilism. This word, invented by Turgénief, and spoken for the first time in “Fathers and Sons,” has in short space gone all over the world. We know that all Russian readers, young and old, blamed the author of the novel for slandering them. The older generation could not forgive him for having spurned their prejudices; the rising generation were angry with him for not preaching their errors. What strikes us to-day is that at this moment he was able to remain so clear-sighted and sincere; that he was able to unite so much nobility with Pavel Kirsánofs narrow-sightedness, and so much subtilty with Bazarof’s destructive scepticism.
But the character which Turgénief liked best in this romance of “Fathers and Sons” was Bazarof,—in other words, that personage representing the Russian soul with aspiration toward progress, no longer ideal and vague, but violent, and brutal. “What! do you, do you say that in Bazarof I desired to draw a caricature of our young men? You repeat (excuse the freedom of the expression), you repeat that stupid reproach? Bazarof! but he is my well-beloved son, who caused me to break with Katkof, for whom I expended all the colors on my palette. Bazarof, that quick spirit, that hero, a caricature!” And he took delight in returning to the definition of this enigmatic personage. He never wearies in commenting on “this harbinger type,” this “grand figure,” surrounded by a genuine “magic spell,” and, as it were, by some sort of “aureole.”
The conclusion of the book lies in the ironical and bitter advice given by Bazarof to his friend Arkad: “Take thee a wife as soon as thou canst, build thy nest well, and beget many children. They will certainly be people of brains, because they will come in due time, and not like thee and me.”
Thus is the solution of the social problem once more postponed. The rock of Sisyphus falls back as heavily on the new-comers as on their predecessors. The recoil is even so mighty that the observer feels that he too is attacked by pessimism; and if he does not take pride in absolute negation, like Bazarof or his young adepts, he just as surely comes to deny their qualities, to see any sense in their conduct. The romance “Smoke,” which is the expression of this new state of mind, roused in Russia all the clamors by which a satire is received. What was entirely overlooked was the feeling of painful compassion hidden under the aggressive form. It was an act of enlightened patriotism, to let daylight into the hollow declamations of the progressists, and to lay the scourge on the stupid folly, the idiotic depravity, of a nobility which had brought itself into discredit. Between Gubaref, that solemn imbecile, and Ramirof, the complaisant husband of a faithless wife, one must go to the hero of the story, Litvinof; that is to say, to the idealized Russia, whose gloomy and painful destiny we have followed across all Turgéniefs work, under the features of Rudin, of Lavretsky, of Bazarof. Like Lavretsky twenty years before, Litvinof returns to his country, overwhelmed with domestic troubles, which exasperate all his other feelings, and change the mishaps of his patriotism into despair. The vanity of love makes him find all things vain. In the tumult of the recent years, in the agitation of divers classes, in the words of others, in his own thoughts, he sees mere nothingness, sham, smoke. The desolation of this conclusion was brought up against the author of the book, by his compatriots, with a warmth which almost disgusted him with the rôle of political observer, and almost deprived us likewise of a masterpiece in which Turgénief seems to have reached his greatest height,—“Virgin Soil.”
The author of “Fathers and Sons” named and defined theoretic Nihilism: in “Virgin Soil,” the same author shows us the Nihilists at the very moment when, for the first time, they begin to act. Between the two books a pretty long time elapsed, during which Turgénief kept silent. There is lacking, therefore, among his works, a book which might let us into the secrets of the dark development and mysterious spread of the new theories. In regard to this Nihilist propaganda in its early years, when it was only an attempt at self-instruction, we find, in “Virgin Soil,” only hints, allusions. The very character, however, who is going to bring about the crisis, at the risk of destroying every thing along with himself, Markelof, still reads and propagates with naïve assurance the “brochures” which are secretly sent him, and which he passes on “under the mantle” to his other confederates. What subjects were treated in these books so carefully hidden? Those which were worth the trouble of reading were translations of foreign works on political economy; writings attacking, with greater or less ability, the problems of society. But this instruction, good or bad, could not have the least influence on the great mass of the Russian population, which does not read at all.
It was therefore necessary to find more efficacious means of action, and to organize actual preaching. Then it was that a pretty large number of people belonging to the educated classes, students like Nedzhanof, women voluntarily deserting their own rank in life, like Marian, undertook to go down among the people, to dress in their style, to speak their dialect, to lead their rough lives, to gain their confidence at the cost of this labor, to open their minds to the ideas of liberty and progress, to rescue them from the double curse of laziness and drunkenness, and, finally, to bring them into the path of action. The trouble was that these people who preached action did not themselves know where to begin the work. Each of them was waiting for the word of command, which no one could give; for in this concert of wills there was no one to direct, and the most violent efforts, from lack of determined purpose, were obliged to remain without results.
Another insurmountable obstacle lay in the repugnance of the people at emerging from their tremendous inertia. Nedzhanof compares Holy Russia to a colossus, whose head touches the north pole and his feet the Caucasus, and who, holding a jug of vodka in his clutched fingers, sleeps an endless sleep. Those who try to struggle against this sleep lose their time and their labor. Discouragement takes hold of them, and some of them, like Markelof, for having desired, having tried by themselves alone, to perform a part which needs the efforts of an army, go forth on the hopeless path by the gate that leads to Siberia; others, like Nedzhanof, having lost faith in this work for the regeneration and enfranchisement of a people to which they believed themselves capable of offering their devotion, throw down violently the double burden of their vain labor and their ridiculous lives. The Russian Hamlet gets rid of his mission by suicide.
This beautiful novel of “Virgin Soil,” which must be read through, appeared on the very eve of the great Nihilist suit against the One Hundred and Ninety-three. At first the cry was raised, that the author did not draw a true picture: the author was again slandering Russia. A few days later the critics, dismayed at his power of divination, accused Turgénief of having got into the confidence of the ruling power, and of having had in his hands the entire brief of the preparatory trial.[38] Some Nihilists were already dreaming of more tragic performances. “I also,” said one of them, who at this time was a refugee in Paris, “I also am a Nedzhanof; but I shall not kill myself as he did: there is a better way of doing it.” This better way was worse. It was assassination in the manner of Soloviéf, who, having resolved to kill himself, and for the same reasons that influenced Nedzhanof, will inaugurate suicide with a bloody preface.
Since “Virgin Soil,” the evolution of Nihilism has made new and rapid strides. The mania of descending among the people, and “being simplified” has given place to other fantastic notions, just as useless, but less innocent. We have said that Turgénief died before he had time to finish the romance in which he would have shown us the agitations of to-day, and possibly pointed out the social reforms of to-morrow.
Who knows what Russia is preparing for us? Hitherto the reforms have been decreed by the throne; and the ukazes have remained without effect, because they have not had the support in the lever of the people. The expenditure of energy, starting from above, did not make the nation stir. But now suddenly the nation seems to be shaking off its torpor. The peasants, hitherto deaf to all voices, and stubbornly resistant of all progress, have perhaps found for themselves the way of safety and redemption. They are assembling in their villages, and they are organizing the league against drunkenness. This strike against the wine-shop is terrifying to the Russian clergy: they see in it a new form of heresy. In their eyes, these water-drinkers are raskolniks, and the most dangerous kind. We know the Russian proverb versified by Nekrásof: “The muzhik has a head like a bull: when a folly finds lodgement there, it is impossible to drive it out, even with heavy blows of the goad.” It is this headstrong obstinacy which seemed to postpone forever, and which may precipitate to-morrow, the settlement of the social question.