Elena, the heroine of On the Eve, resembles Lisa in the absolute integrity of her mind, and in her immovable sincerity; but in all other respects she is a quite different person. The difference is simply the difference between the passive and the active voice. Lisa is static, Elena dynamic. The former's ideal is to be good, the latter's is to do good. Elena was strenuous even as a child, was made hotly angry by scenes of cruelty or injustice, and tried to help everything, from stray animals to suffering men and women. As Turgenev expresses it, "she thirsted for action." She is naturally incomprehensible to her conservative and ease-loving parents, who have a well-founded fear that she will eventually do something shocking. Her father says of her, rather shrewdly: "Elena Nikolaevna I don't pretend to understand. I am not elevated enough for her. Her heart is so large that it embraces all nature down to the last beetle or frog, everything in fact except her own father." In a word, Elena is unconventional, the first of the innumerable brood of the vigorous, untrammelled, defiant young women of modern fiction, who puzzle their parents by insisting on "living their own life." She is only a faint shadow, however, of the type so familiar to-day in the pages of Ibsen, Björnson, and other writers. Their heroines would regard Elena as timid and conventional, for with all her self-assertion, she still believes in God and marriage, two ideas that to our contemporary emancipated females are the symbols of slavery.
Elena, with all her virtues, completely lacks the subtle charm of Lisa; for an aggressive, independent, determined woman will perhaps lose something of the charm that goes with mystery. There is no mystery about Elena, at all events; and she sees through her various adorers with eyes unblinded by sentiment. To an artist who makes love to her she says "I believe in your repentance and I believe in your tears But it seems to me that even your repentance amuses you--yes, and your tears too." Naturally there is no Russian fit to be the mate of this incarnation of Will. The hero of the novel, and the man who captures the proud heart of Elena, is a foreigner--a Bulgarian, who has only one idea, the liberation of his country. He is purposely drawn in sharp contrast to the cultivated charming Russian gentlemen with whom he talks. Indeed, he rather dislikes talk, an unusual trait in a professional reformer. Elena is immediately conquered by the laconic answer he makes to her question, "You love your country very dearly?" "That remains to be shown. When one of us dies for her, then one can say he loved his country." Perhaps it is hypercritical to observe that in such a case others would have to say it for him.
He proves that he is a man of action in a humorous incident. At a picnic, the ladies are insulted by a colossal German, even as Gemma is insulted by a German in Torrents of Spring. Insarov is not a conventional person, but he immediately performs an act that is exceedingly conventional in fiction, though rare enough in real life. Although he is neither big, nor strong, nor in good health, he inflicts corporal chastisement on the brute before his lady's eyes--something that pleases women so keenly, and soothes man's vanity so enormously, that it is a great pity it usually happens only in books. He lifts the giant from the ground and pitches him into a pond. This is one of the very few scenes in Turgenev that ring false, that belong to fiction-mongers rather than to fiction-masters. Nothing is more delightful than to knock down a husky ruffian who has insulted the woman you love; but it is a desperate undertaking, and rarely crowned with success. For in real life ruffians are surprisingly unwilling to play this complaisant role.
Finding himself falling in love with Elena, Insarov determines to go away like Lancelot, without saying farewell. Elena, however, meets him in a thunderstorm--not so sinister a storm as the Æneas adventure in Torrents of Spring-and says "I am braver than you. I was going to you." She is actually forced into a declaration of love. This is an exceedingly difficult scene for a novelist, but not too difficult for Turgenev, who has made it beautiful and sweet. Love, which will ruin Bazarov, ennobles and stimulates Insarov; for the strong man has found his mate. She will leave father and mother for his sake, and cleave unto him. And, notwithstanding the anger and disgust of her parents she leaves Russia forever with her husband.
All Turgenev's stories are tales of frustration. Rudin is destroyed by his own temperament. The heroes of A House of Gentlefolk and Torrents of Spring are ruined by the malign machinations of satanic women. Bazarov is snuffed out by a capriciously evil destiny. Insarov's splendid mind and noble aspirations accomplish nothing, because his lungs are weak. He falls back on the sofa, and Elena, thinking he has fainted, calls for help. A grotesque little Italian doctor, with wig and spectacles, quietly remarks, "Signora, the foreign gentleman is dead--of aneurism in combination with disease of the lungs."
This novel caused great excitement in Russia, and the title, On the Eve, was a subject for vehement discussion everywhere. What did Turgenev mean? On the eve of what? Turgenev made no answer; but over the troubled waters of his story moves the brooding spirit of creation. Russians must and will learn manhood from foreigners, from men who die only from bodily disease, who are not sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. At the very close of the book, one man asks another, "Will there ever be men among us?" And the other "flourished his fingers and fixed his enigmatical stare into the far distance." Perhaps Turgenev meant that salvation would eventually come through a woman--through women like Elena. For since her appearance, many are the Russian women who have given their lives for their country.*
* See an article in the Forum for August, 1910.
The best-known novel of Turgenev, and with the possible exception of A House of Gentlefolk, his masterpiece, is Fathers and Children, which perhaps he intended to indicate the real dawn suggested by On the Eve. The terrific uproar caused in Russia by this book has not yet entirely ceased. Russian critics are, as a rule, very bad judges of Russian literature. Shut off from participation in free, public, parliamentary political debate, the Russians of 1860 and of to-day are almost certain to judge the literary value of a work by what they regard as its political and social tendency. Political bias is absolutely blinding in an attempt to estimate the significance of any book by Turgenev; for although be took the deepest interest in the struggles of his unfortunate country, he was, from the beginning to the end of his career, simply a supreme artist. He saw life clearly in its various manifestations, and described it as he saw it, from the calm and lonely vantage-ground of genius. Naturally he was both claimed and despised by both parties. Here are some examples from contemporary Russian criticism* (1862):--
* To the best of my knowledge, these reviews have never before been translated. These translations were made for me by a Russian friend, Mr. William S. Gordon.
"This novel differs from others of the same sort in that it is chiefly philosophical. Turgenev hardly touches on any of the social questions of his day. His principal aim is to place side by side the philosophy of the fathers and the philosophy of the children and to show that the philosophy of the children is opposed to human nature and therefore cannot be accepted in life. The problem of the novel is, as you see, a serious one; to solve this problem the author ought to have conscientiously and impartially studied both systems of speculation and then only reach certain conclusions. But on its very first pages you see that the author is deficient in every mental preparation to accomplish the aim of his novel. He not only has not the slightest understanding of the new positive philosophy, but even of the old ideal systems his knowledge is merely superficial and puerile. You could laugh at the heroes of the novel alone as you read their silly and 'hashy' discussions on the young generation had not the novel as a whole been founded on these identical discussions."