Like many another author, Turguenief was not a good judge of his own merits, and gave great importance to his longer novels in preference to his admirable shorter ones, in which he scarcely has a rival. He had great expectations of "Smoke," and the dislike it met with in Russia surprised him painfully. So keen was his disappointment that he determined to write no more original novels, but devote himself to his early cherished plan of translating "Don Quixote." He also suffered in one way like most souls who hang upon the lips of public opinion,—the slightest censure hurt him like a mortal wound. The cordial and enthusiastic reception which, in spite of past indignation, he was accorded in Russia in 1878, and the homage and attentions of the students of Moscow, renewed his courage and reanimated his soul.... But his strong constitution failed him at last, and his physical and mental abilities weakened. "The saddest thing that has happened to me," he said to Paulowsky, "is that I take no more pleasure in my work. I used to love literary labor, as one loves to caress a woman; now I detest it. I have many plans in my head, but I can do nothing at all with them." But after all, what posthumous work of Turguenief would bear with a deeper meaning on his literary life than the admirable words of his letter to Count Léon Tolstoï:—
"It is time I wrote you; for, be it said without the least exaggeration, I have been, I am, on my death-bed. I have no false hopes. I know there is no cure. Let this serve to tell you that I rejoice to have been your contemporary, and to make of you one supreme last request to which you must not turn a deaf ear. Go back, dear friend, to your literary work. The gift you have is from above, whence comes every good gift we possess. How happy I should be if I could believe that my entreaty would have the effect I desire!
"As for myself, I am a drowning man. The physicians have not come to any conclusion about my disease. They say it may be gouty neuralgia of the stomach. I cannot walk, nor eat, nor sleep; but it would be tiresome to enter into details. My friend, great and beloved writer in Russian lands, hear my prayer. With these few lines receive a warm embrace for yourself, your wife, and all your family. I can write no more. I am tired."
This pathetic document contains the essence of the writer's life, the synthesis of a soul that loved art above all things else, and believed that of the three divine attributes, truth, goodness, and beauty, the last is the one especially revealed to the artist, and the one it is his especial duty to show forth; and that he who allows his sacred flame to go out, commits a sin which is great in proportion to his talents, and a sin incalculable when commensurate with the genius of Tolstoï.
Turguenief is the supreme type of the artist, for he had the tranquillity and equipoise of soul, the bright serenity, and the æsthetic sensibility which should distinguish it. According to able critics, such as Taine, Turguenief was one of the most artistic natures that has been born among men since classic times. Those who can read his works in the Russian sing marvellous praises of his style, and even through the haze of translation we are caught by its charms. Let me quote some lines of Melchior de Voguié:
"Turguenief's periods flow on with a voluptuous languor, like the broad expanse of the Russian rivers beneath the shadows of the trees athwart them, slipping melodiously between the reeds and rushes, laden with floating blossoms and fallen bird's-nests, perfumed by wandering odors, reflecting sky and landscape, or suddenly darkened by a lowering cloud. It catches all, and gives each a place; and its melody is blended with the hum of bees, the cawing of the crows, and the sighing of the breeze. The most fugitive sounds of Nature's great organ he can echo in the infinite variety of the tones of the Russian speech,—flexible and comprehensive epithets, words strung together to please a poet's fancy, and bold popular sallies."
Such is the effect produced by a thorough reading of Turguenief's works; it is a symphony, a sweet and solemn music like the sounds of the forest. Turguenief is, without exaggeration, the best word-painter of landscape that ever wrote. His descriptions are neither very long nor very highly colored; there is a charming sobriety about them that reminds one of the saving strokes with which the skilful painter puts life into his trees and skies without stopping over the careful delineation of leaf and cloud after the manner of the Japanese. The details are not visible, but felt. He rarely lays stress on minor points; but if he does so, it is with the same sense of congruity that a great composer reiterates a motive in music. Turguenief's enemies make ground of this very dexterity, which is displayed in all his works, for denying him originality,—as though originality must need be independent of the eternal laws of proportion and harmony which are the natural measures of beauty.
Ernest Renan pronounced quite another opinion, however, when, according to the custom of the French, he delivered a discourse over the tomb that was about to receive the mortal remains of Turguenief, on the 1st of October, 1883. He said that Turguenief was not the conscience of one individual, but in a certain sense that of a whole people,—the incarnation of a race, the voice of past generations that slept the sleep of ages until he evoked them. For the multitude is silent, and the poet or the prophet must serve as its interpreter; and Turguenief holds this attitude to the great Sclavonic race, whose entrance upon the world's stage is the most astounding event of our century. Divided by its own magnitude, the Sclav race is united in the great soul and the conciliatory spirit of Turguenief, Genius having accomplished in a day that which Time could not do in ages. He has created an atmosphere of beautiful peace, wherein those who fought as mortal enemies may meet and clasp each other by the hand.
It was just this impartiality and universality, which Renan praises so highly, that alienated from Turguenief many of his contemporaries and compatriots. Where ideas are at war, whoever takes a neutral position makes himself the enemy to both parties. Turguenief knew this, and he used sometimes to say, on hearing the bitter judgments passed upon him, "Let them do what they like: my soul is not in their hands." Not only the revolutionaries took it ill that he did not explicitly cast his adhesion with them, but the country at large, whose national pride spurned foreign civilization, was offended at the candor and realism of his observations. And Turguenief, though Russian every inch of him, loved Latin culture, and had developed and perfected by association with French writers, such as Prosper Mérimée and Gustave Flaubert, those qualities of precision, clearness, and skill in composition, which distinguish him above all his countrymen; yet this was a serious offence to the most of these latter.
Among modern French novelists, those who, to my mind, most resemble Turguenief in the nature of their talents, are, first, Daudet, for intensity of emotion and richness of design, and then the brothers Goncourt in some, though not very many, pages. Yet there is a notable difference in all. Daudet is less the epic poet than Turguenief, because he devotes himself to the study of certain special aspects of Parisian fife, while Turguenief takes in the whole physiognomy of his immense country. From the laboring peasants and the nihilist students to the generals and government clerks, he depicts every condition,—except the highest society, which has been reserved for Léon Tolstoï. And everything is vivid, interesting, fascinating,—the poor paralytic of "Living Relics," as well as the courageous heroine of "Virgin Soil,"—everything is real as well as poetical. Truth and poetry are united in him as closely as soul and body. Though he is an indefatigable observer, he never tires the reader; his heart overflowed with sentiment, yet his good taste never permitted him to utter a false note either of brutality or cant; he was a most eloquent advocate of emancipation, moderation, and peace, yet no diatribe of either a social or political character ever ruffled the celestial calm of his muse. Puchkine and Turguenief are, to my mind, the two Russian spirits worthy to be called classic.
Those who knew him and associated with him speak of his goodness as one speaks of a mountain's height when gazing upward from its foot. Voguié calls him a heavenly soul, one of the poor in spirit burning with the fire of inspiration, one who seemed, amid the hard and selfish world, the vain and jealous world of French letters, a visionary with gaze distraught and heart unsullied, a member of some shepherd tribe or patriarchal family. Every Russian that arrived penniless in Paris went straight to his house for protection and assistance.