CHAPTER V
THE PLACE OF TOURGENIEV
In the preceding I have tried very briefly to point out the state of the barometer of public opinion (the barometer of the average educated man and not of any exclusive clique) with regard to Tourgeniev’s reputation in Russia at the present day.
That and no more. I have not devoted a special chapter in this book to Tourgeniev for the reasons I have already stated: namely, that his work is better known in England than most other Russian classics, and that admirable appreciations of his work exist already, written by famous critics, such as Mr. Henry James and M. Melchior de Vogüé. There is in England, among people who care for literature and who study the literature of Europe, a perfectly definite estimate of Tourgeniev. It is for this reason that I confined myself to trying to elucidate what the average Russian thinks to-day about Tourgeniev compared with other Russian writers, and to noticing any changes which have come about with regard to the estimate of his work in Russia and in Europe during the last twenty years. I thought this was sufficient.
But I now realise from several able criticisms on my study of Tolstoy and Tourgeniev when it appeared in the Quarterly Review, that I had laid myself open to be misunderstood. It was taken for granted in several quarters not only that I underrated Tourgeniev as a writer, but that I wished to convey the impression that his reputation was a bubble that had burst. Nothing was farther from my intention than this. And here lies the great danger of trying to talk of any foreign writer from the point of view of that writer’s country and not from that of your own country. You are instantly misunderstood. For instance, if you say Alfred de Musset is not so much admired now in France as he used to be in the sixties, the English reader, who may only recently have discovered Alfred de Musset, and, indeed, may be approaching French poetry as a whole for the first time, at once retorts: “There is a man who is depreciating one of France’s greatest writers!”
Now what I wish to convey with regard to Tourgeniev is simply this:
Firstly, that although he is and always will remain a Russian classic, he is not, rightly or wrongly, so enthusiastically admired as he used to be: new writers have risen since his time (not necessarily better ones, but men who have opened windows on undreamed-of vistas); and not only this, but one of his own contemporaries, Dostoievsky, has been brought into a larger and clearer light of fame than he enjoyed in his lifetime, owing to the dissipation of the mists of political prejudices and temporary and local polemics, differences, quarrels and controversies.
But the English reader has, as a general rule, never got farther than Tourgeniev. He is generally quite unacquainted with the other Russian classics; and so when it is said that there are others greater than he—Dostoievsky and Gogol, for instance,—the English reader thinks an attempt is being made to break a cherished and holy image. And if he admires Tourgeniev,—which, if he likes Russian literature at all he is almost sure to do,—it makes him angry.
Secondly, I wish to say that owing to the generally prevailing limited view of the educated intellectual Englishman as to the field of Russian literature as a whole, I do think he is inclined to overrate the genius and position of Tourgeniev in Russian literature, great as they are. There is, I think, an exaggerated cult for Tourgeniev among intellectual Englishmen.[15] The case of Tennyson seems to me to afford a very close parallel to that of Tourgeniev.
Mr. Gosse pointed out not long ago in a subtle and masterly article that Tennyson, although we were now celebrating his centenary, had not reached that moment when a poet is rapturously rediscovered by a far younger generation than his own, but that he had reached that point when the present generation felt no particular excitement about his work. This seems to me the exact truth about Tourgeniev’s reputation in Russia at the present day. Everybody has read him, and everybody will always read him because he is a classic and because he has written immortal things, but now, in the year 1909, there is no particular excitement about Fathers and Sons in Russia: just as now there is no particular excitement about the “Idylls of the King” or “In Memoriam” in England to-day. Tourgeniev has not yet been rediscovered.
Of course, there are some critics who in “the fearless old fashion” say boldly that Tennyson’s reputation is dead; that he exists no longer, and that we need not trouble to mention him. I read some such sweeping pronouncement not long ago by an able journalist. There are doubtless Russian critics who say the same about Tourgeniev. As to whether they are right or wrong, I will not bother myself or my readers, but I do wish to make it as clear as daylight that I myself hold no such opinion either with regard to Tourgeniev or to Tennyson.