V.

In this study of Turgénief, I do not flatter myself that I have pointed out all the aspects of a character so varied,--that I have shown all the traits of a nature so complex. Yet it would be a serious lack if I did not explain Turgénief’s relationship to the writers of his country, or if I neglected the great number of criticisms which he has passed, in his letters to his friends, in regard to the literary movement of the last thirty years.

He characterizes the epoch to which he belongs. It is still, in his opinion, an epoch “of transition.” He deplores the lack of union, the want of solidarity, in the men who in Russia hold this weapon,--the pen; and who might, by concentrating their efforts, triumph over so many obstacles against which, in their isolation, they run a-muck and bruise themselves. “Each one sings his own song, and follows his lonely path.”

He speaks without too much feeling about his enemies, unless he finds a settled aversion for their work, and for their conception of art. “I am sorry for Tchernuishevsky’s dryness, his tendency to crudeness, his unceremonious treatment of living writers; but I find nothing in him corpse-like. I see a living fountain spouting.” To be sure, he has little to praise in the man of whom he thus speaks; but malice, arising from personal attacks, could not draw him far from the truth. “These are spring waters,” said he in regard to certain injurious writings directed against him. “They will run off, and no trace of them will be left.”

It is not the same with him when teachings wound him, and when the literary form disgusts him. After having loved Nekrásof, he goes so far as no longer to recognize any talent in him, so shocked, so disgusted, is he by his intentional brutalities. His verses “leave behind them an after-taste which makes me nauseated.” “What a son of a dog!” he says in another place. “He is a vulture, ravening and gorging.” But Nekrásof[42] died before him; and he modifies, he explains the judgment which he had passed upon him. “No matter if the young have been infatuated with him, this has done no harm. The chords set in vibration by his poetry (if you can give the name of poetry to what he wrote) are good chords. But when St. ----, addressing these young people, tells them that they are right in placing Nekrásof above Pushkin and Lermontof,[43] and tells them so with an imperturbable smile, I find it hard to restrain my indignation, and I repeat the lines of Schiller:--

“‘I have seen splendid crowns of glory woven for most common brows.’”

His early sympathy for the novelist Dostoyevsky[44] was soon changed to dislike, owing to their differences of opinion. The sharp features in the character of the author of “Crime and Punishment” were not slow to disgust Turgénief. He could not be brought back by the reading of works, the clearly marked tendency of which is sometimes to put a check upon his own. He was not sparing of admiration for the “Recollections of a Dead House.” “The picture of the _banya_ (bath) is really worthy of Dante. In the character of the various people (that of Petrof, for example), there is much fine and true psychology.”

But when Dostoyevsky’s faults grow more pronounced; when his qualities become extravagant, and themselves turn to mannerisms; when this keenness, once so fine and delicate, loses itself in subtleties; when the writer’s sensitiveness changes into supersensitiveness; when his imagination goes beyond the bounds of reason, and gloats over the pursuit of the horrible,--Turgénief does not hide his disgust, his scorn. “God, what a sour smell! What a vile hospital odor! What idle scandal! What a psychological mole-hole!”[45]

Turgénief prefers as he debars, he loves as he detests; that is to say, with a passion which is contagious, and carries the reader with him. One should see with what pleasure he receives the works of the satirist Soltuikof, better known and more appreciated under the _nom de guerre_ of Shchedrin. What a feast it was for him, when a new “Letter to my Aunt” appeared! With what joy he applauded its satirical features which were “powerful even to gayety”! Soltuikof seems disturbed at the flood of hatred which he stirs up. “If you only had a title of hereditary nobility, nothing of the sort would have happened to you. But you are Soltuikof-Shchedrin, a writer to whom it will have been given to leave a deep and permanent impress on our literature: then you will be hated, and you will be loved also; that only depends on the person.”

The most striking example of this generosity of Turgénief’s is shown us by the spectacle of his relations with his great rival Tolstoï. From the moment when Tolstoï’s first book appeared, Turgénief, already famous, distinguishes the young author, welcomes him as a new star, and feels impelled by an irresistible desire to love him. “My heart goes out to you as towards a brother.” “Childhood and Youth” appear. Turgénief’s admiration is expressed in this fashion: “When this young wine shall have finished fermenting, there will come forth a drink worthy of the gods.”

Life separates them; the most diverse mental tendencies still further increase this separation. There is even, at one time, an inopportune meeting, conflict, violent rupture, almost tragic, since a duel narrowly escaped being the result. There are noticeable in Turgénief, from that moment, movements of vexation. The admiration which he was the first to arouse in Tolstoï’s favor turns, becomes fashionable, and goes to commonplace unreason: still he continues to be glad that “War and Peace” is praised to the skies; “but it is by its most dubious merits that the public want to regard it as unequalled.” In his opinion, there are not such good reasons for falling into ecstasies about “Anna Karénina.” “Tolstoï this time has taken the wrong track; and that is due to the influence of Moscow, of the Slavophile nobility, of orthodox old maids, to the isolation in which the author lives, to the impossibility of finding in Russia the requisite degree of artistic liberty.”

But excessive strictures are rare in him; and how richly they are compensated by the generous crusade, which, from the year 1878, Turgénief undertakes for the sake of popularizing Tolstoï in France, and of building him a pedestal which at the present time threatens to rise higher than his own! If, unfortunately for French readers, a “Russian lady” had not got ahead of him, he would have translated the masterpiece which he liked the best, which seemed to him to give the highest idea of Tolstoï’s great powers,--“The Cossacks.”

In last resort, he contents himself with the most active propaganda in favor of another translation, that of “War and Peace.” His correspondence shows him to us, going about carrying the book to Flaubert, to Taine, to Edmond About, to those who are capable of enjoying this foreign dish without further advice. He hopes that their articles will enlighten those who need to be told in order to get the taste of it. His illness alone turns him away from this occupation which I have no need of qualifying: it is too characteristic.

At the hour of death, Turgénief’s last thought turns to Tolstoï. I beg the reader to go back to that admirable letter, to that short literary will, in which the dying author salutes, and calls back to the arena from which he is just departing, his great rival in talent and in glory.

It would be very strange, if having lived long in France, and having made precious literary friendships, Turgénief had not mentioned names

## particularly interesting for French readers. He speaks much in his

letters of the contemporaneous realistic school, and he judges it favorably, especially at its first beginning. He does more than enjoy the Goncourts and Zolas. He makes arrangements for them with the directors of Russian journals or reviews; he endeavors to have one or two thousands of francs more paid for their manuscripts, by giving them to be translated into Russian before they are published in France.

Especially for Zola did he use his mediatorial influence. He seems very happy to help him; nevertheless, he does not fail to note with his delicate and imperceptible irony certain amusing traits of character. “As far as Zola is concerned, you told me that you would pay more for his manuscript than Stasulevitch. I have informed Zola.... His teeth have taken fire at it.” “In his last visit to Paris, Stasulevitch, having made Zola’s acquaintance, gilded him from head to foot, on the one condition that Zola should belong to him alone. So the European messenger (_Vyestnik Yevropui_) seems in Zola’s eyes like the fabulous hen with the golden eggs, which he must guard like the apple of his eye.”

The friendship, made of admiration and sympathy, between Turgénief and Flaubert, is well known. It is painted in Turgénief’s letters in truly expressive lines: “I have translated one of Gustave Flaubert’s stories. It is not long, but of incomparable beauty. It will appear in the April number of ‘The European Messenger.’ Perhaps two translations of it will appear. I recommend it to you in advance. I have endeavored, so far as in me lay, to reproduce the colors and tone of the original.” Flaubert dies. Turgénief is so moved that he breaks with all his habits. He, so sober, so disliking noise, wire-pulling, puffing, puts himself at the head of a demonstration in the Russian journals; and he opens a subscription for a monument to his friend. He speaks with genuine disgust of the low interpretations to which this intervention on his part gave rise. His enemies affected to see in this something like the return of an old actor, who had left the stage, and was tormented by yearning for the scenes.

It would not be well to dwell too strongly on Turgénief’s judgment in regard to Victor Hugo. Turgénief was a true poet, but when he wrote in verse he never rose above mediocrity. He knew it, and he criticised this part of his work very severely. The quality of his verses is explained better when it is seen how narrowly and unfairly he judges _La Légende des Siècles_. The epic grandeur and originality of this work escape him: its swing is too powerful, and it wearies him; its brilliancy is too intense, and it blinds him. He judges Victor Hugo as a poet of thirty years ago--Pushkin, if he had come to life--might have done: he did not much rise above the Byronian horizon.[46]

He is, however, more just towards Swinburne, the English Hugo. But here, again, his criticism is superficial: favorable as it is, one can see that he has not had time to find his reasons, and touch bottom.

The critical faculty is evidently less keen in Turgénief than in others of his friends,--Shchedrin, for example. He it was who caused the scales to fall from Turgénief’s eyes, and revealed for him what he himself felt somewhat confusedly as to the often artificial and conventional character of our realists. “I would have kissed you with delight, ... to such a degree what you say about the romances of Goncourt and Zola hits the case, and is true. As for me, it seemed so confusedly, as though I had a heavy feeling over the epigastrium. I have just this moment uttered the _Akh!_ of relief, and seen clearly.... It cannot be said that they have not talent, but they do not follow the right way: they are already inventing too much. Their literature smacks of literature, and that is bad.”

Although he was warned, Turgénief was not the man to wish to put others on the lookout. The success of another did not fill him with any envy. On the other hand, the disappointment of those who were dear to him caused him real pain. After the failure of one of George Sand’s dramas, he wrote this charming word: “If I had met her, I should not have said any thing of the _fiasco_ of her poor piece: like a respectful son of Noah, I turn away my eyes, and hide the nakedness of my grandam.”

He had recovered from his boyish enthusiasm for the work of the illustrious novelist, “I cannot any longer hold by George Sand, any more than by Schiller”, he wrote in 1856. But in place of admiration for the diminished and collapsed merits of the writer, there was substituted, especially in latter years, a touching worship for the truly virile virtues of the woman.

This is the way he speaks of her, on the day of her death, in a letter meant for publication: “It was impossible to enter into the circle of her private life, and not become her adorer in another sense, and perhaps in a better sense. Every one felt immediately that he was in presence of an infinitely generous and benevolent nature, in which all the egotism had been long and thoroughly burned away by the ever-ardent flame of poetic enthusiasm and faith in the ideal; a nature to which all that was human became accessible and dear, and from which exhaled, as it were a breath of cordiality, of friendliness, and above all that, an unconscious aureole, something sublime, free, heroic. Believe me, George Sand is one of our saints.”

We cannot better finish this review of names loved by Turgénief than by letting the reader rest on this luminous portrait of George Sand. In the virtues which Turgénief ascribed to her, is it not allowed us to find many of his own?

FOOTNOTES:

[25] This is a mistake. His father died in 1835; and his mother reached the age of seventy, dying in 1850.

[26] Turgénief says in his Recollections: “About Easter, 1843, in Petersburg, an event took place, in itself indeed of small importance, and long ere this swallowed up in perfect oblivion. It was this: A short poem entitled Parasha, by a certain T. L., was published. That T. L. was I. With this poem I began my literary career.” He says further that Biélinsky’s praise was so extravagant that he felt more confusion than pleasure. “I could not believe it,” he adds; “and when in Moscow the late I. V. Kiréyevski came to me with congratulations, I hastened to disown my child, declaring that I was not the author.”--N. H. D.

[27] _Zapiski Okhotnika._

[28] Yet Biélinsky wrote him: “‘Khor’ gives promise that you will be a remarkable writer--in the future.”--N. H. D.

[29] Turgénief says in his Recollections: “I should certainly never have written The Annals of a Sportsman if I had staid in Russia. I was in a state of mind singularly analogous to Gogol’s, who just about this time wrote his best pages about Russia from ‘the beautiful distance.’” The article on Gogol’s death was not passed by the Petersburg censor, but was admitted by the Moscow censor, and appeared in the Vyédomosti in March, 1852. Nevertheless, the article was construed as a violation of the law: “I was put under partial arrest for a month, and then sent into domicile in the country, where I lived two years.... But all for the best.... My being under arrest, and in the country, proved to my undeniable advantage: it brought me close to those sides of Russian life which, in the ordinary course of things, would probably have escaped my observation.”--N. H. D.

[30] A misquotation, of course, of

“How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seems to me all the uses of this world!”--N. H. D.

[31] _Dvoryánskaye Gnyezdó_, an untranslatable title. A Nest of Nobles or Courtiers or Gentlemen fairly expresses it.

[32] “In 1863 Ivan Sergéyevitch bought a plat of land at Baden Baden, built a house on it, and lived there until 1870.”--_Polevoï._

[33] _Nov_, the Russian title, means merely _new_,--one of the words, by the way, showing the affinity of Russian with Latin, English, and the other Indo-European languages,--and is suggestive not only of new land, but of new people and new ideas.--N. H. D.

[34] His generosity was more than princely; not even the palpable impositions of his impecunious countrymen caused him to clasp his ever-open purse. It is related that a Russian family residing in Paris made frequent applications to this abundant fountain. Turgénief saw through their wiles, but let the stream still flow. The little daughter of the family showed some musical talent, and Turgénief undertook her education. It happened that there was a very exclusive school in Paris; and one fine day the ambitious mother came and besought their Mæcenas to use his influence to have the young girl admitted where no foreigner was allowed. Turgénief was at last a little nettled, and in epigrammatic Russian he said, “Make her either a candle for the Lord, or an ash-scraper for the Devil” (_Bogu svyétchu ili Tchortu katchergu_).--N. H. D.

[35] _Tchto Dyélat_, a translation of which is published by T. Y. Crowell & Co., under the title A Vital Question.

[36] Písemsky described this same generation in his great story, _Liudi Sorokovuikh Godof_ (People of the Forties).--N. H. D.

[37] Also under the title _Un Bulgare_.--N. H. D.

[38] It was reported, and believed by some, that the Russian government paid Turgénief fifty thousand rubles for Virgin Soil.--N. H. D.

[39] Yuliana Betrishef in Dead Souls is not a portrait: she is a luminous apparition.--_Author’s note._

[40] A Russian proverb says, “Alone as a finger.”--_Translator’s note, quoted by author._

[41] It is only just to make exception in favor of Alfonse Daudet. His talent is largely made up of sentiment, and even of sentimentality.--_Author’s note._

[42] Nikolai Alekseyévitch Nekrásof, born in December, 1821, editor of the _Sovremennik_ from 1847 till 1866. Afterwards, when the _Sovremennik_ was suppressed, he edited the _Otetchestvennui Zapiski_ till his death, which took place in January, 1877. He was eminently Russia’s popular poet.--N. H. D.

[43] Mikhaïl Yuryevitch Lermontof, the author of the great poem Demon, and other verses inspired by the Caucasus, was born in 1814, and died in 1841.

[44] Feódor Mikhaïlovitch Dostoyevsky was born in 1822 in Moscow, and died in March, 1881. His life reads like a romance. For a short sketch of it, and also for the translation of the scene from his _Zapiski iz Mertvava Doma_, so praised by Turgénief, see appendix.--N. H. D.

[45] A brilliant Russian lady, now in this country, writes to the translator as follows: “I am glad indeed that you escaped the translation of ‘Crime and Punishment.’ You would never find any readers for such a book in this country. I could never read any of Dostoyevsky’s books through. It made me sick. My nerves could not bear the strain on them. I don’t believe in pathology in literature. And yet another of my American acquaintances, who is thoroughly versed in Russian, ... tried to translate ‘Crime and Punishment,’ but had not time to do it. He says he never read, in any language, any thing so powerful as _Prestuplenie i Nakazanie_. Generally speaking, your countrymen have too healthy a constitution to appreciate such a novel. Let it turn heads among the pessimists in France and Russia, the natives of effete Europe.”--N. H. D.

[46] This explains, perhaps, why he did not appreciate Nekrásof. Indeed, Turgénief, though his literary judgments are always interesting, must be taken with a grain of salt: like a true poet, he was not a critic. On the other hand, Tchernuishevsky, whose critical judgments Turgénief affected to despise, was a born critic, and his literary prognostications were greatly in advance of his time. See Appendix.--N. H. D.

[Illustration: LYOF N. TOLSTOÏ.]

LYOF TOLSTOÏ.