His exile for a year and a half to his own estate was, however, by no means a bad thing for his own self-development. Years afterwards he wrote: “All was for the best.... My being under arrest and in the country proved to my undeniable advantage; it brought me close to those sides of Russian life which, in the ordinary course of things, would probably have escaped my observation.” He consoled himself with shooting, with music, with reading, with literary composition, and it is to this enforced detention in Russia that, no doubt, we owe the masterpiece Rudin (1855), which he rewrote many times, declaring to Aksakov that none of his other stories had ever given him so much trouble. In fact this novel, in grace, ease and strength, has the quality of finished statuary.
Though sixty years have passed since the appearance of Rudin, no dust has gathered on the novel, so original is the leading figure. The portrait of the hero who typifies the failure of the Russian intelligentsia of the ‘’forties’ to do more than talk, is as arresting as the day on which it was painted. In him Turgenev creates a fresh variety of idealist, the orator sapped by the love of his own words. Rudin is Russian in the combination of his soft, wavering will, his lofty enthusiasm for ideas, and his rather naïve sincerity: in other respects, he might be a western European. Behind him we feel generations of easygoing manorial gentlefolk regarding in surprise this curious descendant, whose clever brain is aglow with a passion for “eternal truth” and for the “general principles” of German philosophy. One is haunted by a sense of Rudin’s cousinship to other famous idealists in life and literature; he shows affinities both to a contemporary, Coleridge, and to a famous successor, Ibsen’s Brand.
English idealism in general is both a covering for mundane interests, and a spiritual compromise with those same interests. An English Rudin would have gone into the Church, and as a Canon or Bishop would have attained celebrity by his gift of lofty and magnetic eloquence. But a Russian Rudin does not succeed in buttering his bread; it is both his unworldliness and lack of will that bring his powers to nought. Rudin can and does indeed, deceive himself; but the strands of hypocrisy in his nature are too fragmentary to bring him worldly success.
Of Turgenev’s six novels, Rudin is the most perfect in form, by the harmony of its parts and absolute grace of modelling.[15] Everywhere the master’s chisel has fined away his material to attain the most delicately firm contours. The grouping of the character is a lesson in harmonious arrangement. Note by what simple, natural steps one passes from the outer circle of the neighbours of the wealthy patroness of art and letters, Darya Mihailovna, to the inner circle of her household. The cold, suave egoism of the lady of the manor is admirably set off by the sketches of her dependents, the simple young tutor, Bassistoff, her young Jewish protégé Pandalevsky, and the cynic Pigasov. The household is expecting the arrival of a guest, a Baron Muffel, but in his place arrives his acquaintance, Dmitri Rudin, slightly shabby, but of pre-possessing address.
[15] For a discussion of Turgenev’s debt to George Sand’s novel, Horace, see M. Halperine-Kaminsky’s Tourguéneff and his French Circle, p. 301.
A master of eloquent language, Rudin conquers his hearers by his fine bearing and brilliant talk. But notice that the effect he instantaneously produces holds in germ all the after development of the story. Volintsev fears in him a rival for Natalya’s love; Pandalevsky is on his guard against the clever stranger who may dispossess him in the favour of the mistress of the house; Natalya falls in love with the newcomer who has fired her girlish imagination; while her mother, Darya Mihailovna, is planning to keep Rudin, this coming lion, in her house to adorn her salon. The structure of the story, beautifully planned, is a lesson in the directness and ease of artistic development. Everything flows, simply and inevitably, from the actions of the group of characters, quickened and watchful after Rudin’s arrival.
As an example of Turgenev’s skill in drawing a man with a dozen touches, and of exposing the mainspring of his nature by a few of his words and actions, consider the Jewish-looking youth, Pandalevsky; with the slight, exact strokes of his chisel Turgenev here graves a perfect intaglio. Pandalevsky, in the opening pages, meeting the charming Alexandra Pavlovna on her walk, offers her his arm, unasked. “She took it.” After some flowery remarks, Pandalevsky, presuming further, says, “Allow me to offer you this lovely wild flower.” Alexandra Pavlovna did not refuse it, but “after a few steps, let it drop on the path.” The sensitive woman is repelled by the young Jew’s familiarity and his thickness of skin, and indeed Pandalevsky has scarcely turned his back on her, when he transfers his interest to a peasant girl working in the field, and so coarse is his talk that she stops her ears and mutters, “Go away, sir; upon my word!”
Again, note how the characters all reveal themselves by their unconscious behaviour. On the night of Rudin’s unexpected arrival, while Bassistoff sits up, pouring out his soul in an eloquent letter to a friend, and Natalya cannot sleep for thinking of Rudin’s glowing eloquence, “Pandalevsky went to bed, and as he took off his daintily embroidered braces, he said aloud, ‘A very smart fellow,’ and suddenly, looking harshly at his page, ordered him out of the room.” By this little revelation of his mean spirit the young Jew prepares us for his furtive suspicion of Rudin, and for his playing the spy subsequently. By a word, a gesture, a look, psychologically exact, Turgenev secures thus in a sentence effects which it takes his rivals a paragraph or a page to make clear to us. Thus his scenes always appeal by their aesthetic ease and grace.
Remark again how swift, precise and final is Turgenev’s exploration of Rudin’s character. Tired of wandering, Rudin, as Darya Mihailovna’s guest, is glad to have found a congenial circle, perhaps indeed a home, but while every one seems to listen eagerly to him, and he lays down the law to the household, a cold undercurrent of criticism is already felt threatening his position. One of the neighbours, Lezhnyov, had been at college with Rudin in youth, and from his talk about their past relations one learns why Rudin, despite his genius, has not succeeded in life. He is a theorist and he has never really understood human nature. So much so is this indeed that Rudin does not realize in time that Natalya, this girl “of an ardent, true and passionate nature,” has fallen in love with him, and exalts him as her spiritual teacher. And when Rudin’s eyes are opened this fatal flaw in his character is seen. He lives only for his ideas and for his audience; his great, his sole power lies in the magic of his stimulating, flowing oratory. He is a master of words, but he cannot act. Lezhnyov is right in declaring that Rudin in his relations with others, even in his love affairs, “only needs a fresh opportunity of speechifying and giving vent to his fine talk, and that’s what he can’t live without.” Rudin, carried away by the discovery of Natalya’s love, pretends and simulates love for her, but his “passion” is shown to be hollow when the young girl comes to warn him that Pandalevsky, spying on them, has betrayed their secret meetings to her mother, who is angry and jealous that Rudin should be paying court to her daughter. Rudin is in consternation at the news. He has been so intent on his eloquent feelings that he has not faced the practical difficulties. And he has made no plans to face the future. But let us quote the scene: