If one must read Balzac in France in order to retrace the lives of our predecessors, this is all the more true of Turgenef in Russia.
This author sharply discerned the prevailing current of ideas which were developed in that period of transition,—the reign of Nicholas and the first few years of the reign of Alexander II. It required a keen vision to apprehend and describe the shifting characters and scenes of that period, vivid glimpses of which we obtain from his novels written at that time.
His first one of this period is “Dimitri Roudine.” The hero of the story is an eloquent idealist, but practically inefficient in action. His liberal ideas are intoxicating, both to himself and others; but he succumbs to every trial of life, through want of character. With the best principles and no vices whatever, except, perhaps, an excess of personal vanity, he commits deeds in which he is his own dupe. He is at heart too honest to profit by offered opportunities, which would give him advantage over others; and, with no courage either for good or evil undertakings, he is always unsuccessful, and always in want of money. He finally realizes his inefficiency, in old age, and dies in extreme poverty.
The characters of the prosaic country life in which the hero’s career is pictured are marvellously well drawn. These practical people, whose ideas are nearly on a level with the earth which yields them their livelihood, prosper in all things. They have comfortable incomes, good wives, and congenial friends; while the enthusiastic idealist, in spite of his intellectual superiority, falls even lower. It is the triumph of prosaic fact over idealism. In this introductory work, the author touched keenly upon one of the greatest defects of the Russian character, and gave a useful lesson to his fellow-countrymen; showing them that magnificent aspirations are not all-sufficient, but they must be joined to practical common-sense, and applied to self-government. “Dimitri Roudine” is a moral and philosophical study, inciting to thought and interesting to the thinking mind. It was a question whether the author would be as skilful in the region of sentiment, whether he would succeed in moving the heart.
His “Nest of Nobles”[G] was his response; and it was, perhaps, his greatest work, although not without defects. It is less interesting than the other, as the development of the plot drags somewhat; but when once started, and fully outlined, it is carried out with consummate skill.
The “Nest of Nobles” is one of the old provincial, ancestral mansions in which many generations have lived. In this house the young girl is reared, who will serve as a prototype for the heroine of every Russian novel. She is simple and straightforward, not strikingly beautiful or gifted, but very charming, and endowed with an iron will,—a trait which the author invariably refuses to men, but he bestows it upon every young heroine of his imagination. This trait carries them through every variety of experience and the most extreme crises, according as they are driven by fate.
Liza, a girl of twenty, has been thus far wholly insensible to the attractions of a handsome government official, whose attentions her mother has encouraged. Finally, weary of resistance, the young girl consents to an engagement with him, when Lavretski, a distant relative, appears upon the scene. He is a married man, but has long been separated from his wife, who is wholly unworthy of him. She is an adventuress, who spends her time at the various Continental watering-places. There is nothing whatever of the hero of romance about him; he is a quiet, kind-hearted, and unhappy being, serious-minded and no longer young. Altogether, a man such as is very often to be met with in real life. He and the young heroine are drawn together by a mysterious attraction; and, just as the man, with his deeper experience of life, recognizes with terror the nature of their mutual feelings, he learns of the death of his wife, through a newspaper article. He is now free; and, that very evening, in the old garden, both hearts, almost involuntarily, interchange vows of eternal affection. The description of this scene is beautiful, true to nature, and exceedingly refined. The happiness of the lovers lasts but a single hour; the news was false, and the next day Lavretski’s wife herself appears most unexpectedly upon the scene.
We can easily see what an opportunity the author here has for the delineation of the inevitable revulsion and tumult of feeling called forth; but with what delicacy he leads those two purest of souls through such peril! The sacrifice is resolutely made by the young girl; but only after a fearful struggle by the lover. The annoying and hated wife disappears again, while the reader fondly hopes the author will bring about her speedy death. Here again those who wish only happy dénouements must close the book. Mme. Lavretski does not die, but continues the gayest kind of a life, while Liza, who has known of life only the transient promise of a love, which lasted through the starry hours of one short evening in May, carries her wounded heart to her God, and buries herself in a convent.
So far, this is a virtuous and rather old-fashioned story, suitable for young girls. But we must read the farther development of the tale, to see with what exquisite art and love for truth the novelist has treated his subject. There is not the slightest approach to insipid sentimentality in this sad picture; no outbursts of passion; but, with a chaste and gentle touch, a restrained and continually increasing emotion is awakened, which rends the heart. The epilogue of this book, only a few pages in length, is, and will always be, one of the gems of Russian literature.
Eight years have passed in the course of the story; Lavretski returns one morning in spring to the old mansion. It is now inhabited by a new generation, for the children have become young men and women, with new sentiments and interests. The new-comer, hardly recognized by them, finds them in the midst of their games. The story opened in the same way, and we seem to have gone back to the beginning of it. Lavretski seats himself upon the same spot where he once pressed for a moment in his the hand of the dear one, who ever since that blissful hour has been counting the beads of her rosary in a cloister.