Russia: Its People and Its Literature

by condesa de Emilia Pardo Bazán

Two old country gentlefolk, a physician and his wife, represent the elder generation, the society of yesterday, and two students the society and generation of to-day. Bazarof is the leader, the ruling spirit of the two latter; the novelist has given him so much vivacity that we seem to hear him, to see his long, withered face, his broad brows, his great greenish eyes, and the prominent bulges on his heavy skull. I have seen such types as this many a time in the streets and alleys of the Latin Quarter, which is the lurking-place of Russian refugees in Paris, and I have said to myself, "There goes a Bazarof, exiled and half dead with hunger, and yet perhaps more eager to set off a few pounds of dynamite under the Grand Opera-House than to breakfast!"

Bazarof, however, is not yet the nihilist who wishes to make a political system out of robbery and assassination, and to defend his theory in learned treatises; he is a young fellow smarting and burning under the contemplation of his country's sad state, and whom the knowledge got by his studies in medicine, natural sciences, and German materialist dogmas has made the bitterest and most intolerable of mortals, throwing away his gifts of intellect and his heart's best and most generous impulses. By reason of his energy of character and intellectual force, he takes the lead over his companion Arcadio, an enthusiastic and unsophisticated boy; and the novel begins with the return of the latter to his father's country-house in company with his adored leader. The two generations then find themselves face to face, two atheistical and demagogic young students, and Arcadio's father and uncle, conservative and ceremonious old men; the shock is immediate and terrible. Bazarof, with his mania for dissecting frogs, his negligent dress, his harsh and dogmatic replies, his coarse frankness, and his odor of drugs and cheap tobacco, inspires antipathy from the first moment, and he is himself made more captious than usual by the appearance of the uncle, Paul, an elegant and distinguished-looking man, who preserves the traditions of French culture, dresses with the utmost care, has a taste for all that is refined and poetical, and wears such finger-nails as, says Bazarof, "would be worth sending to the Exposition." The contrast is as lively as it is curious; every motion, every breath, produces conflict and augments the discord. Arcadio, under his friend's influence, finds a thousand ways to annoy his elders; he sees his father reading a volume of Puchkine, and snatches it out of his hands, giving him instead the ninth edition of "Force and Matter." And after all the poor boy really cannot follow the hard, harsh ideas of Bazarof; but he is so completely under the latter's control, and looks upon him with so much respect and awe, and stands in such fear of his ridicule, that he hides his most innocent and natural sentiments as though they were sinful, and dares not even confess the pleasure he feels at sight of the country and his native village.

"What sort of fellow is your friend Bazarof?" Arcadio's father and uncle inquire of him.

"He is a nihilist," is the response.

"That word must come from the Latin nihil," says the father, "and must mean a man that acknowledges and respects nothing."

"It means a man who looks at everything from a critical point of view," says Arcadio, proudly.

Criticism, pitiless analysis, barren and overwhelming,—this is an epitome of Bazarof, the spirit of absolute negation, the contemporary Mephistopheles who begins by taking himself off to the Inferno.

The punishment falls in the right place. Consistently with his physiological theories, Bazarof denies the existence of love, calls it a mere natural instinct, and women females; but scarcely does he find himself in contact with a beautiful, interesting, clever woman—somewhat of a coquette too, perhaps—than he falls into her net like a clumsy idealogue that he is, and suffers and curses his fate like the most ardent romanticist. Quite as curious as the antithesis of the two generations in the house of Arcadio's aristocratic father, is the contrast shown in that of the more humble village physician, the father of Bazarof, who is an altogether pathetic personage. He, too, is possessed of a certain pedantic and antiquated culture, and an excellent, kind heart; he adores his son, thinks him a demi-god, and yet cannot by any means understand him. Arcadio's father, on hearing an exposition of the new theories, shrugs his shoulders and exclaims, "You turn everything inside out nowadays. God give you health and a general's position!" The physician, quite non-plussed, murmurs sadly, "I confess that I idolize my son, but I dare not tell him so, for he would be displeased;" and he adds with ridiculous pathos, "What comforts me most is to think that some day men will read in the biography of my son these lines: 'He was the son of an obscure regiment physician who nevertheless had the wisdom to discern his talents from the first, and spared no pains to give him an excellent education.' Here the voice of the old man died away," says the writer. Such details bespeak the great poet. Again when Bazarof is seized with typhus fever and dies, it is not his fate which affects us, but the grief of his old father and mother, who believe that one light of their country has been put out, and that they have lost the best treasure of their uncontaminated and tender old hearts. The death of this atheist makes an admirable page. When, as he is losing consciousness, extreme unction is administered to him, the shudder of horror that passes over his face at sight of the priest in his robes, the smoking incense, the candles burning before the images, is communicated to our own souls.

From 1860 Turguenief remained in France, bound by ties that shaped his course of life. He enjoyed there a reputation not inferior to that which he possessed in his own country; his works were all translated, and his soul was soothed by an almost fraternal intimacy with the greatest French writers, notably Gustave Flaubert and George Sand; and yet his thoughts were never absent from his far-away fatherland, and as a reproof to his fruitless longings he wrote "Smoke," which put the capital of Russia almost in revolt. But Turguenief was no bilious satirist after the style of Gogol, much less a habitual vilifier of existing classes and institutions like Tchedrine; on the contrary, he had a keen observation like Alphonse Daudet, and the sweeping artist-glance which takes in the moral weaknesses as well as physical deformities. The scene of "Smoke" is laid in Baden-Baden, the resort of rich people who go there to enjoy themselves, to gossip, to intrigue, and to throw themselves aimlessly into the maelstrom of frivolous and idle life. The Russian world passes rapidly before our eyes, and last of all the hero, weary and blasé, who with bitter words compares his country to the thin, feathery smoke that rises in the distance. Everything in Russia is smoke,—smoke, and nothing more!

Turguenief was one of those who loved his country well enough to tell her the truth, and to warn her—in an indirect and artistic manner, of course—persistently and incessantly. His was the jealous love of the master for the favorite pupil, of the confessor for the soul under his guidance, of the ardent patriot for his too backward and unambitious nation. Turguenief compared himself, away from his country, to a dead fish kept sound in the snow, but spoiling in time of thaw. He said that in a strange land one lives isolated, without any real props or profound relation to anything whatever, and that he felt his own creative faculties decay for lack of inspiration from his native air; he complained of feeling the chill of old age upon him, and an incurable vacuity of soul. While he thus pined with homesickness, in Russia his books wrought a wholesome change in criticism; the new generation turned its back upon him, and after a general scandal followed an oblivious silence, of the two perhaps the harder to bear.