Another singularity, which shows us to what a degree the author takes us from our own latitude: in him the women have less originality than the young girls. The indecision and feebleness found in their lovers, the Rudins and the Nedzhanofs, is paralleled by the resolute wisdom, and—let us use the words “graceful virility,” in them. They somewhat resemble the Roman girls, and we expect to hear them say in their way the “Non dolet” of the illustrious Arria. But no; they have not in the least these rather theatrical attitudes and words. It is the Nedzhanofs who die like impatient Stoics, or perhaps like discouraged Epicureans: Marian continues to live, and without bustle to prepare for the freeing of the country which she loves.
Women raised by noble feeling to the scorn of death are found elsewhere than in Russia. What is more rare, and almost impossible to find, are these fanatical sacrifices, these renunciations worthy of the primitive days of the Church, which associate lovely maidens of sixteen with imbecile vagabonds eaten up by hideous ulcers. Turgénief might have multiplied in his work description of pathological cases (“Strange Stories”), but if his realism is too artistic to delay over what is commonplace, he is too honest to devote himself to exceptions.
The form which best brings out this sincerity of expression is the tale. Turgénief takes little stock in dramatic form, at least in his own case. “I see a subject,” he used to say, “only when I have the framework, the portrait, the dialogues, the wanderings, of a narration.” In the drama he felt himself bothered by the necessity of collecting, abridging, curtailing, filling in; and his psychology seemed to him warped, when presented in miniature. It is in vain that you brought up in opposition to this modest claim the form of such and such of his stories, which from beginning to end is an uninterrupted scene, a dramatic dialogue.
“That is not dramatic dialogue,” said he: he was and had to remain a narrator.
To find finished narration, it is sufficient, indeed, to open at hap-hazard “The Annals of a Huntsman.” Nothing is lacking; not character-painting, or lively course of the story, or surprise in circumstances, or development of the situation, or harmony of outline, or feeling for nature, or grace of style, or value of coloring. But one ought to have heard Turgénief, and to have seen him in his character of story-teller, to imagine to what degree all these qualities in him were spontaneous. It was especially in this that his conversation was unlike any one else’s: it translated ideas into images, and, without any attempt, created paintings which one would never forget.
Does narration in Turgénief gain by assuming the ampler proportions of the novel? Our French taste is open to suspicion, and I hesitate about replying. Our good novelists are such clever carpenters: they construct so symmetrically works so ingeniously arranged for effect; the interest is kept up with such skill; the action moves along with such a certain step, towards a logical result feared or suspected from the very first word! We find ourselves at first not quite so much at our ease in these Russian novels, which are full of art, but are bare of little artifices; where the developments are like the course of real life; where the characters hesitate, and sometimes remain still; where the action develops without haste; and where the author does not even think it important to come to an end. It is sufficient for him to state facts, and explain characters. This perfect naturalness, at first a trifle dubious, finally comes to have a great charm. There is nothing which is more able to make us reflect on the puerile stress which we lay on the method, and on the often to-be-regretted emptiness of our novels of industrious mechanism.
We should not have given Turgénief his just deserts if we forgot to praise him as a poet worthy of all admiration. I mean, as a poet in prose; for Turgénief was no more successful than Gogol in making good verse. Both of them used a language that was picturesque, infinitely expressive, full of images, and, in the case of Turgénief more than Gogol, of perfect purity and the greatest variety. He feels all the beauties of nature, and expresses them with powerful originality, or a delicate charm which shines through even the rather thick veil of translations. And yet what shadings escape us, what graces are lost for us!
The Russian language has infinite resources. If it is less exact in expressing the relations of action and of time, it brings out the most imperceptible circumstances of action. It outlines with less clearness: it paints with incredible richness of coloring. It is easy to understand what effects a writer who can see and can express—a poet, in a word—is able to make with it. Turgénief’s descriptions threw Merimée into despair. One day, when he was trying to put into French a passage where the author had represented the peculiar sound of the rain falling on a sheet of water, the French words grésillement froid (cold shrivelling), destined to translate this inexpressible noise, caused the author of “Colomba” to hesitate. “Yet that is it,” said he, thinking better of it; “and the thing must be said, or lose the bit of observation, which is perfectly true to nature. The Devil take the pedants! Let us leave the phrase.”
How far this poetic realism is from our flat and tiresome enumerations of details heaped up without selection! But the parallel between the Russian realists and the French realists, to which this subject constantly attracts us, would carry us too far. It is sufficient to point out the essential difference. Observation in our realists is systematic and cold; in the Russians, and, above all, in Turgénief, it is always natural, and generally passionate. There is not a novel by Turgénief where the pathetic has not a large part; and sometimes this pathos, by the simplest means, reaches heights neighboring upon the sublime.
I shall only quote one example of it, taken from “Fathers and Sons;” and I have no fear that the reader will charge me with bad taste in cutting out this admirable scene from this novel, extended as it is:—