It is illuminating to observe Turgenev’s well-nigh invariable method of story-telling. First he will draw in a setting with much attention to detail and introducing characters who add nothing to the story proper but do add immeasurably to the atmosphere—and atmosphere is miraculously handled by this master. Then he will begin to show phases of the leading character. And when at last we have formed a perfect picture of the person in his surroundings, a dramatic, a pathetic, a deep-revealing flash comes forth in the form of an anecdote or an incident—and the story is done. Character pictures, mostly in statu quo—these are the master’s offerings. Plot, in the modern sense, is almost unknown to Turgenev—as character-drawing, alas, is almost a lost art to the short-story writer of today! But it must be said that only an artist of the first order could carry his method to success.
A list of Turgenev’s short fictional pieces—technical short-stories they are not—would number more than fifty, many of them almost novelettes in length. Some of the best are “Assia,” “The Jew,” “A Lear of the Steppes,” “Mumu,” “First Love,” “The Brigadier,” and “The Song of Triumphant Love.”
In the following outline and translated passages taken from M. de Vogüé’s distinguished discussion of “Russian Novelists,” we may gain a good view of Turgenev’s method and style.
In “A Living Relic,”[2] Turgenev as the narrator strongly wakes a human chord. On a hunting expedition, he enters by chance an abandoned shed, where he finds a wretched human being, a woman, deformed, and unable to move. He recognizes in her a former serving-maid of his mother’s, once a gay, laughing girl, now paralyzed, stricken by some strange and terrible disease. This poor creature, reduced to a skeleton, lying forgotten in this miserable shed, has no longer any relations with the outside world. No one takes care of her; kind people sometimes replenish her jar with fresh water. She requires nothing else. The only sign of life, if life it can be called, is in her eyes and her faint respiration. But this hideous wreck of a body contains an immortal soul, purified by suffering, utterly resigned, lifted above itself, this simple peasant nature, into the realms of perfect self-renunciation.
Lukerya relates her misfortune: how she was seized with this illness after a fall in the dark; how she had gone out one dark evening to listen to the songs of the nightingales; how gradually every faculty and every joy of life had forsaken her.
Her betrothed was so sorry; but, then, afterwards he married; what else could he do? She hopes he is happy. For years her only diversion has been to listen to the church-bells, and the drowsy hum of the bees in the hives of the apiary near-by. Sometimes a swallow comes and flutters about in the shed, which is a great event, and gives her something to think about for several weeks. The people that bring water to her are so kind, she is so grateful to them! And gradually, almost cheerfully, she goes back with the young master to the memories of old days, and reminds him how vain she was of being the leader in all the songs and dances; at last, she even tries to hum one of those songs.
“I really dreaded to have this half-dead creature try to sing. Before I could speak, she uttered a sound very faintly, but the note was correct; then another, and she began to sing ‘In the Fields.’... As she sang there was no change of expression in her paralyzed face or in her fixed eyes. This poor little forced voice sounded so pathetic, and she made such an effort to express her whole soul, that my heart was pierced with the deepest pity.”
Lukerya relates her terrible dreams, how Death has appeared before her; not that she dreads his coming, but he always goes away and will not deliver her. She refuses all offers of assistance from her young master; she desires nothing, needs nothing, is perfectly content. As her visitor is about to leave her, she calls him back for a last word. She seems to be conscious (how feminine is this!) of the terrible impression she must have made upon him, and says:
“Do you remember, master, what beautiful hair I had? You know it reached to my knees.... I hesitated a long time about cutting it off, but what could I do with it as I am? So—I cut it off.... Adieu, master!”