These years of “terror” have since furnished much amusement for the Russians; but those who passed through them, warmed by the enthusiasm and illusions of youth, have always retained, together with the disinclination to express themselves frankly, a vein of pathos throughout their writings. Besides, the liberty granted to authors in the reign of Alexander II. was only a relative one; which explains why they returned instinctively to novel-writing as the only mode of expression which permitted any undercurrent of meaning. In this agreeable form we must seek for the ideas of that time on philosophy, history, and politics; for which reason I have dwelt on the importance of studying the Russian novelists attentively. In their romances, and only in them, shall we find a true history of the last half-century of their country, and form a just idea of the public for which the works were written.
This people’s way of reasoning and their demands are peculiar to themselves. In France, we expect of a romance what we expect of any work of art, according to the degree of civilization we have reached; something to afford us a refined amusement; a diversion from the serious interests of life; merely a passing impression. We read books as a passing pedestrian looks at a picture displayed in some shop window, casually, on his way to his business. They regard the masters of their language quite otherwise in Russia. What for us is a temporary gratification is to them the soul’s daily bread; for they are passing through the golden age of their literature. Their authors are the guides of the race, almost the creators of their language; their poets are such according to the ancient and full sense of the word—vates, poet, prophet.
In Russia, the small educated class have perhaps surpassed us in cultivation; but the lower classes are just beginning to read with eagerness, faith, and hope; as we read Robinson Crusoe at twelve years of age. Their sensitive imaginations are alive to the full effect these works are calculated to produce. Journalism has not scattered their ideas and lessened their power of attention. They draw no comparisons, and therefore believe.
We consider “Fathers and Sons,” and “War and Peace” merely novels. But to the merchant of Moscow, the son of the village priest, the country proprietor, either of these works is almost like a national Bible, which he places upon the shelf holding the few books which represent to him an encyclopædia of the human mind. They have the importance and signification for him that the story of Esther had for the Jews, and the adventures of Ulysses for the Athenians.
Our readers will pardon these general considerations, which seemed to us necessary before approaching the three most prominent figures of this period, which we choose from among many others as the most original of the two groups they divide into. Dostoyevski will represent to us the opinions of the Slavophile or national school; Turgenef will show us how many can remain thoroughly Russian without breaking off their connections with the rest of Europe; and how there can be realists with a feeling for art and a longing to attain a lofty ideal. He belonged to the liberal party, which claims him as its own; but this great artist, gradually freeing himself from all bounds, soars far above the petty bickerings of party strife.
II.
Turgenef’s talent, in the best of his productions, draws its inspiration directly from his beloved father-land. We feel this in every page we read. This is probably why his contemporaries long preferred him to any of his rivals. In letters, as well as in politics, the people instinctively follow the leaders whom they feel belong to them; and whose spirit and qualities, even whose failings, they share in common. Ivan Sergievitch Turgenef possessed the dominant qualities of every true Russian: natural kindness of heart, simplicity, and resignation. With a remarkably powerful brain, he had the heart of a child. I never met him without realizing the true meaning of the gospel words, ‘poor in spirit’; and that that quality can be the accompaniment of a scientific mind and the soul of an artist. Devotion, generosity, brotherly love, were perfectly natural to him. Into the midst of our busy and complicated civilization he seemed to drop down as if from some pastoral tribe of the mountains; and to carry out his ideas under our sky as naturally as a shepherd guides his flocks in the steppe.
As to his personal appearance, he was tall, with a quiet dignity in his manner, features somewhat coarse; and his finely formed head and searching glance brought to mind some Russian patriarch of the peasant class; only ennobled and transfigured by intellectual cultivation, like those peasants of old who became monks and perhaps saints. He gave me the impression of a person possessing the native frankness of the peasant, while endowed with the inspiration of genius; and who had reached a high intellectual elevation without having lost anything of his natural simplicity and candor. Such a comparison could not, surely, offend one who so loved his people!
Now, when the time has come to speak of his work, my heart fails me, and I feel disposed to throw down my pen. I have spoken of his virtues; why should we say more, or dwell upon the brilliant qualities of his mind, adding greater eulogies? But those who know him well are few, and they will soon die and be forgotten. We must then try to show to others what that great heart has left of itself in the works of his imagination. These are not few, and show much persevering labor. The last complete edition of his works comprises not less than ten volumes: romances, novels, critical and dramatic essays. The most notable of these have been carefully translated into French, under the direction of the author himself; and no foreigner’s work has ever been as much read and appreciated in Paris as his.
The name of Turgenef was well known, and had acquired a literary reputation in Paris, at the beginning of the present century; for a cousin of the author’s, Nikolai Ivanovitch (Turgenef), after having distinguished himself in the government service under Alexander I., was implicated in the conspiracy of December, 1825, and exiled by the Emperor Nicholas. He spent the remainder of his life in Paris, where he published his important work, “Russia and the Russians.” He was a distinguished man and an honest thinker, if perhaps a little narrow, and one of the most sincere of those who became liberals after 1812. Faithful to his friends who were exiled to Siberia, he became their advocate, and also warmly pleaded the cause of the emancipation of the serfs; so that his young cousin continued a family tradition when he gave the death-blow to slavery with his first book.