“‘And what advice can I give you, Natalya Alexyevna?’
“‘What advice? You are a man; I am used to trusting to you. I shall trust you to the end. Tell me, what are your plans?’
“‘My plans.... Your mother will certainly turn me out of the house.’
“‘Perhaps.... She told me yesterday that I must break off all acquaintance with you.... But you do not answer my question?’
“‘What question?’
“‘What do you think we must do now?’
“‘What we must do?’ replied Rudin; ‘of course submit.’
“‘Submit,’ repeated Natalya slowly, and her lips turned white.
“‘Submit to destiny,’ continued Rudin. ‘What is to be done?... I know very well how bitter it is, how painful, how unendurable. But consider yourself, Natalya Alexyevna; I am poor. It is true I could work; but even if I were a rich man, could you bear a violent separation from your family, your mother’s anger?... No, Natalya Alexyevna; it is useless even to think of it. It is clear it was not fated for us to live together, and the happiness of which I dreamed is not for me!’
“All at once Natalya hid her face in her hands and began to weep. Rudin went up to her.
“‘Natalya Alexyevna! Dear Natalya!’ he said with warmth, ‘do not cry, for God’s sake do not torture me, be comforted.’
“Natalya raised her head.
“‘You tell me to be comforted!’ she began, and her eyes blazed through her tears; ‘I am not weeping for what you suppose—I am not sad for that; I am sad because I have been deceived in you.... What! I come to you for counsel, and at such a moment!—and your first word is submit! submit! So this is how you translate your talk of independence, of sacrifice which....’
“Her voice broke down.
“‘But, Natalya Alexyevna,’ began Rudin in confusion, ‘remember—I do not disown my words—only——’
“‘You asked me,’ she continued with new force, ‘what I answered my mother, when she declared she would sooner agree to my death than my marriage to you; I answered that I would sooner die than marry any other man.... And you say, “Submit!” It must be that she is right; you must, through having nothing to do, through being bored, have been playing with me.’
“‘I swear to you, Natalya Alexyevna—I assure you,’ maintained Rudin.
“But she did not listen to him.”
Natalya’s passionate answer: “I told my mother that I would die sooner than marry any other man.... And you say ‘submit’!” passes through Rudin’s self-esteem like a knife. He protests vainly again and again his love. But he has exposed his ambiguous emptiness too fully. And now he must leave Darya Mihailovna’s household, discredited in his own, in Natalya’s and in everybody’s eyes.
Remark in the passage quoted above how the conflicting currents of the girl’s passionate warmth and the man’s ambiguous reasoning—like hot and cold springs mingling—flow in a form beautiful by its grace of line. The scene is graven as lightly, yet as durably as an antique Greek gem. One must emphasize this union of soft warmth and grace in Turgenev’s work, for it is one of his special characteristics. While the beauty of his feeling declares itself by its purity of tone, all the mental shades of a scene or a conversation are unfolded with flowing, flexible grace. Even a piece of mental analysis, a synthesis of the internal life of character, and of pure thought, are stamped with the spontaneous gestures of life. And calm and mellow tenderness seems to emanate, as a secret essence, from his pictures. We cite a little passage, famous in Russian literature, where Turgenev sketches a portrait of Byelinsky, under the pseudonym of Pokorsky, Rudin’s friend:
“‘... He took pity on me, perhaps; anyway, he took me by the arm and led me away to his lodging.’
“‘Was that Rudin?’ asked Alexandra Pavlovna.
“‘No, it was not Rudin ... it was a man ... he is dead now ... he was an extraordinary man. His name was Pokorsky. To describe him in a few words is beyond my powers, but directly one begins to speak of him, one does not want to speak of any one else. He had a noble, pure heart, and an intelligence such as I have never met since. Pokorsky lived in a little, low-pitched room, in an attic of an old wooden house. He was very poor, and supported himself somehow by giving lessons. Sometimes he had not even a cup of tea to offer to his friends, and his only sofa was so shaky that it was like being on board ship. But in spite of these discomforts a great many people used to go and see him. Every one loved him; he drew all hearts to him. You would not believe what sweetness and happiness there was in sitting in his poor little room! It was in his room I met Rudin. He had already parted from his prince before then.’
“‘What was there so exceptional in this Pokorsky?’ asked Alexandra Pavlovna.
“‘How can I tell you? Poetry and truth—that was what drew us all to him. For all his clear, broad intellect he was as sweet and simple as a child.... Pokorsky and Rudin were very unlike. There was more flash and brilliance about Rudin, more fluency, and perhaps more enthusiasm. He appeared far more gifted than Pokorsky, and yet all the while he was a poor creature by comparison. Rudin was excellent at developing any idea, he was capital in argument, but his ideas did not come from his own brain; he borrowed them from others, especially from Pokorsky: Pokorsky was quiet and soft—even weak in appearance—and he was fond of women to distraction, and fond of dissipation, and he would never take an insult from any one. Rudin seemed full of fire and courage and life, but at heart he was cold and almost a coward, until his vanity was touched, then he would not stop at anything.... And really when I recall our gatherings, upon my word there was much that was fine, even touching in them.... Ah, that was a glorious time, and I can’t bear to believe that it was altogether wasted! And it was not wasted—not even for those whose lives were sordid afterwards. How often have I chanced to come across such old college friends! You would think the man had sunk altogether to the brute, but one had only to utter Pokorsky’s name before him and every trace of noble feeling in him was stirred at once; it was like uncorking a forgotten phial of fragrance in some dark and dirty room.’”
How perfect is the form of the novel! Rudin’s sudden appearance at Darya Mihailovna’s house, from the void, his brief, brilliant scintillation, his disappearance beyond the horizon like a falling star, while the little circle he has quitted returns to its quiet settled round, and is knitted closer, by and by, in two marriages. In the final chapters Turgenev gives a wonderful feeling of the stormy horizon of life in his glimpses of Rudin’s restless wanderings, of his pathetic series of failures, of his useless death in a hopeless cause on a Paris barricade. It is now the genius of Turgenev’s heart that speaks, the head in absolute unison with the heart. For Turgenev’s creative judgment, infinitely just, infinitely tender, is a court of appeal from all hard, worldly arraignments. All that has been shown us of Rudin’s Utopianism, of the “something lacking” in his character and outlook is true. But it is not the whole truth. In Lezhnyov’s final words, “Rudin has faith, Rudin has honesty. He has enthusiasm, the most precious quality in our times. We have all become insufferably reasonable and indifferent and slothful.” That is the point. The Rudins, the idealists of the “’forties,” were the yeast in the dough of Russian fatalism and the nation’s stagnation. For one idealist there were a thousand lethargic, acquiescent minds, clinging to the rock of personal interest, staking nothing, but all subservient to the forces of official despotism or worldly power. In Rudin burned clear the light of humane, generous ideals, of the fire of the love of truth. Most of the intellectual seed he scattered fell by the wayside or was swallowed up in the morass of Russia’s social distress and mass impotence. But, in Lezhnyov’s words: “I say again, that is not Rudin’s fault, and it is his fate—a cruel and unhappy fate—for which we cannot blame him.” And when we survey the figures of that gloomy reign of Nicholas, when “a merciless Imperialism repressed the least sign of intellectuality,” it was the Rudins who breathed on and passed on that living seed of fire to the younger generation.
It is to be remarked that not a line, not a detail in the social picture seems to have faded. The picture by its truth and art is timeless in its plastic grace, like a Tanagra group, or a Velasquez portrait. Nothing, indeed, can be added or taken away from the masterpiece.
V
“A HOUSE OF GENTLEFOLK”