Prince Krapotkin in his Autobiography of a Revolutionist thus describes Turgénieff:—
His appearance is well known. Tall, strongly built, the head covered with soft and thick gray hair, he was certainly beautiful; his eyes gleamed with intelligence, not devoid of a touch of humor, and his whole manner testified to that simplicity and absence of affectation which are characteristic of all the best Russian writers. His fine head revealed a formidable development of brain power, and when he died, and Paul Bert, with Paul Reclus (the surgeon), weighed his brain, it so much surpassed the heaviest brain then known—that of Cuvier—reaching something over two thousand grammes, that they would not trust to their scales, but got new ones, to repeat the weighing. His talk was especially remarkable. He spoke, as he wrote, in images. When he wanted to develop an idea, he did not resort to arguments, although he was a master in philosophical discussions; he illustrated his idea by a scene presented in a form as beautiful as if it had been taken out of one of his novels.
Of all novel writers of our century, Turgénieff has certainly attained the greatest perfection as an artist, and his prose sounds to the Russian ear like music—music as deep as that of Beethoven.
Touching on the objections raised by the Nihilists as to the truth of the portrait of Bazaroff, Prince Krapotkin writes:—
The principal novels—the series of Dmitri Rudin, A Nobleman’s Nest, On the Eve, Fathers and Sons, Smoke, and Virgin Soil—represent the leading “history making” types of the educated classes of Russia, which evolved in rapid succession after 1848; all sketched with a fulness of philosophical conception and humanitarian understanding and an artistic beauty which have no parallel in any other literature. Yet Fathers and Sons—a novel which he rightly considered his profoundest work—was received by the young people of Russia with a loud protest. Our youth declared that the Nihilist Bazaroff was by no means a true representation of his class; many described him even as a caricature upon nihilism. This misunderstanding deeply affected Turgénieff, and, although a reconciliation between him and the young generation took place later on, at St. Petersburg, after he had written Virgin Soil, the wound inflicted upon him by these attacks was never healed.
He knew from Lavroff that I was a devoted admirer of his writings; and one day, as we were returning in a carriage from a visit to Antokolsky’s studio, he asked me what I thought of Bazaroff. I frankly replied, “Bazaroff is an admirable painting of the nihilist, but one feels that you did not love him as much as you did your other heroes!” “No, I loved him, intensely loved him,” Turgénieff replied, with an unexpected vigor. “Wait; when we get home I will show you my diary, in which I noted how I wept when I had ended the novel with Bazaroff’s death.” Turgénieff certainly loved the intellectual aspect of Bazaroff. He so identified himself with the nihilist philosophy of his hero that he even kept a diary in his name, appreciating the current events from Bazaroff’s point of view. But I think that he admired him more than he loved him. In a brilliant lecture on Hamlet and Don Quixote, he divided the history makers of mankind into two classes, represented by one or the other of these characters. “Analysis first of all, and egotism, and therefore no faith; an egotist cannot even believe in himself;” so he characterized Hamlet. “Therefore he is a sceptic, and never will achieve anything; while Don Quixote who fights against windmills, and takes a barber’s plate for the magic helm of Mambrin (who of us has never made the same mistake?) is a leader of the masses, because the masses always follow those who, taking no heed of the sarcasms of the majority, or even of persecutions, march straight forward, keeping their eyes fixed upon a goal which they alone may see. They search, they fall, but they rise again, and find it—and by right, too. Yet, although Hamlet is a sceptic, and disbelieves in Good, he does not disbelieve in Evil. He hates it; Evil and deceit are his enemies; and his scepticism is not indifferentism, but only negation and doubt, which finally consume his will.”
These thoughts of Turgénieff give, I think, the true key for understanding his relations to his heroes. He himself and several of his best friends belonged more or less to the Hamlets. He loved Hamlet and admired Don Quixote. So he admired also Bazaroff. He represented his superiority well, but he could not surround him with that tender, poetical love to a sick friend which he bestowed on his heroes when they approached the Hamlet type. It would have been out of place.
Although suffering from a cancer in the spinal cord, Turgénieff wrote to Alexander III, begging him to give Russia a constitution—this was in the autumn of 1881—but of course to no purpose. The man whose books helped to bring about the emancipation of the serfs died in exile, not even a prophet in the literature of his own country. Yet, because of their poets and prose masters Russia will one day be free, and then Turgénieff’s name will be writ in golden letters as the artist, the patriot.
II
In 1868 he writes from Baden to Ambroise Thomas about a sketch made by Viardot for the libretto of an opera. Nothing, however, came of the matter. But only in the new letters translated by Rosa Newmarch, do we catch Turgénieff’s opinion of the neo-Russian school of music. For the most part it is rather a contemptuous opinion and not pleasant reading for his contemporaries. He hated humbug, and the cry of young Russia, with its hatred of the sources whence it derived its inspiration, angered the writer. In correspondence with Vladimir Vassilievich Stassov we catch glimpses of the tempest brewing in the Slavic samovar.