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Brygida PUDEŁKO

The treatment of unrequited Iove in ’s Virgin Soil and ’s Under Western Eyes

The impact of Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) on European literaturę and the European reading public was largely due to the Russian’s attitude to his art and life which were generally morę acceptable and comprehensible to European sensibilities and fitted him morę closely than his great contemporaries Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) into the European literary tradition.1 A re- presentative of the new Russian intelligentsia, as much at home in Paris or Berlin as in Moscow or St Petersburg, a man of noble birth, liberał inclinations and cultivated tastes, extraordinarily gifted and well-read, Turgenev was a man of convinced

1 The seeds of Russian realism were planted in the 1840’s, a decade of transition from the romantic tradition, and the realist period covered approximately the years 1845 to 1905. The term realism indicates that writers drew their subjects from the daily lives of people around them, and aimed at a high degree of authenticity in their re-creations of experience, and that they conceived their work as a means to exploring important ąuestions about the human situation in the universe. The classical Russian school of realism in fiction stems from Alexander Pushkin, not only from his prose tales, but also from his novel in verse, Evgeni Onegin. The crown and glory of the realistic novel were the three giants Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Lev Tolstoy. While Turgenev, with his favorite “weak hero” and “strong heroine” types, was obviously a continuator of Pushkin, Dostoevsky followed GogoFs lead in his preoccupation with the downtrodden and the oppressed. But unlike Gogol, who developed characters through external details, Dostoevsky analyses his characters from within and is primarily interested in their souls. Leo Tolstoy, in both manner and subject matter, reverts to the Pushkin tradition of realism, but unlike Turgenev, he was not primarily concemed, in his artistic works written before his spiritual change in 1880, with contemporary problems of social signiftcance. Following the thoughts of Vissarion Belinsky, who defended sociological realism in literaturę, Turgenev abandoned romantic idealism for a morę realistic style. Fle is a great realist, whose thoughts and emotions blend into one; he interprets life, but always preserves the atmosphere, the glamour and the mystery of the living thing in his interpretation. But Turgenev did not become completely devoted to realism. His letters and critical reviews attest his disapproval of certain traits of realism in both Russian and Western literaturę. He deprecated the excessive use of realistic details, photographic depiction of reality as well as extreme objectivism and the increasing usage of superfluous details in literary works.

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Westemist views, whose leisurely prose evokes faultlessly both the period and people. The professionally generous “European”, Turgenev was one of the most popular members of the French literary circle and friend of the Brothers Goncourt ( 1822-1896, 1830-1870), Prosper Merimee (1803-1870) and (1821-1880). Turgenev’s intimate association with French writers, and in particular with Gustave Flaubert, was founded on a deep understanding between the two men of the same generation (only three years sepa- rated them), profession and standing, who have undergone essentially comparable aesthetic experiences: a comtnon desire to base their works on the same principles of objectivity. It was at Flaubert’s that Turgenev met Emile Zola (1840-1902) and Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) for the First time, Daudet was already fairly well established on the literary market. Turgenev also had English connections, principally through his translator, William Ralston. His influence on Anglo-American literaturę came through (1843-1916), who looked up to him as a master. Yet, for all his cosmo- politanism, Turgenev was deeply concemed with Russian issues. According to Patrick Waddington, the novelist’s long residence outside Russia “had blunted his feelings, no doubt; but it had also broadened the scope of his observation” (Waddington 1995: 19). A continuity of aesthetic concem has long been acknowledged between Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, Ivan Turgenev and Henry James. Their novels show common influences as well as certain parallels in concept and execution. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), who was obsessively determined to master the techniąues of fictional writing, believed that the key methods and principles could be leamt from the above mentioned masters of the art, who displayed a care for style and form. While discussing Turgenev’s and Conrad’s literary preferences and literary masters, it emerges that in their preoccupations with form, techniąue and style both Turgenev and Conrad much reflect their French background. Like Turgenev, Joseph Conrad was an outsider who valued Western civilization and culture a lot. Although perceived by some English people as a “bloodyfurriner” as Conrad was aware, and identified as a “Slav” (Collected Letters... 1983-2008 vol. 3: 492), Conrad none- theless insists that Poland is part of the West, contrary to Russian imperialism and his identification of the latter with the East. He endorses the aesthetic and cultural values of the Western canon and marginalizes non-Western and non-canonical works of Dostoevsky. It comes as no surprise that Turgenev, the Russian who adhered to Western beliefs and European principles, appealed to Conrad. The universal attributes, as they were expressed in Turgenev’s works, as well as his literary preferences and masters, appealed to the English writer. The great Russian novelists of the nineteenth century aroused mixed feelings in Conrad. Although Lev Jolstoy was considered by Conrad “perhaps ... worthy” (Collected Letters... 1983-2008 vol. 3: 71) of Constance Gametfs translation, he was treated with reserved respect and suspicion as being too mystical for Conrad’s taste. His chief

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antipathy was reserved for Dostoevsky - “the grimacing, haunted creature, who is under a curse” (Jean-Aubry 1927 vol. 2: 290) - in contrast to the civilized, liberał and humane Turgenev, who was one of Conrad’s literary predecessors and masters, next to Flaubert, Maupassant and James.2 We may agree that avoiding being accused of rejecting all “things Russian” and all Russian writers, Conrad found it easiest to praise Turgenev, who combined in himself and his writing national and universal values in a satisfactory balance. Conrad’s unreserved admiration for Turgenev dated from his childhood. “As a boy,” Conrad wrote to Garnett on 2 May 1917, “I remember reading in Polish translation”3 and “Gentlefolks in French” (Jean-Aubry 1927 vol. 2: 192). Edward Garnett, for whom Turgenev was “a great poet and artist”, in his introduction to writes: “If Tolstoy is a purer native expression of Russia’s force, Turgenev is the personification of Russian aspiration working with the instruments of wide cosmopolitan culture” (Garnett 1995: 131). It should be stressed that ’s translations of Turgenev’s novels, which appeared between 1894 and 1899, Consolidated Conrad’s knowledge of Turgenev, and contributed to Edward Gametfs persistent insistence upon reading Conrad as a second Turgenev. Undoubtedly, the most eloquent tribute to Constance Gametfs translations of Turgenev’s works comes in a letter to her husband Edward written by Conrad in May 1917: “Turgeniev for me is Constance Garnett and Constance Garnett is Turgeniev. She has done that marvellous thing of placing the man’s work inside English literaturę and it is there that 1 see it - or rather that I feel it” (Jean-Aubry 1927 vol. 2: 192). In the preface, Conrad contributed to Garnetfs study of Turgenev, he praises the Russian writer for his “penetrating insight and unfailing generosity of judgement, an exquisite perception of the visible world and an unerring instinct for the significant” (Conrad 1921: 48) which “should make [him] sympathetic and welcome to the English-speaking world” (Conrad 1921: 47). He adds that:

All his creations, fortunate and unfortunate, oppressed and oppressors are human beings, not strange beasts in a menagerie or damned souls knocking themselves to pieces in the stuffy darkness of mystical contradictions. They are human beings, fit to live, fit to suffer, fit to struggle, fit to win. fit to lose, in the endless and inspiring gamę of pursuing from day to day the ever-receding futurę. (Conrad 1921: 47)

2 Conrad was twenty-six years old when Turgenev died in 1883. Almayer’s Folly - his first novel was pub- lished twelve years later in 1895.

3 On Polish translations of Turgenev’s works, see Trochimiak J., 1985, Turgieniew, Lublin, pp. 155-159. The first Polish translation of Smoke [Dym] (1867) by A. Wiślicki was published in 1871. On the Eve (1860) in Polish translation appeared in 1871, 1873 and 1874; [Ojcowie i dzieci] (1862) in 1871; A Nesl o f Gentlefoik [Szlacheckie gniazdo] (1859) in 1876 and 1886; [Rudiń] (1856) in 1886; A Sportsman 's Sketches [Zapiski myśliwego] (1852) in 1880 andl897; “King Lear of the Steppes” [“Stepowy król. Lear”] (1870) in 1876, 1878 and 1879.

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The treatment of unreąuited love by Turgenev and Conrad presents some similarities. Both writers show the fundamental loneliness and apartness of man from woman, even in situations commonly considered to be intimate. To Turgenev and Conrad love is often a testing ground. Their lovers are romantic souls who fail to reach their dreams. The romantic dream and the realistic nightmare are both characterised by man’s inherent separateness. Conrad was well acąuainted with Turgenev’s Nezhdanov from Yirgin Soil (1877). Calling one of Galsworthy’s characters “incapable,” Conrad observed: “Of the two incapables that come to one’s mind, the loąuacious and the nervous, Rudin and Nejdanof, that cannot be said in the absolute sense” (Jean-Aubry 1927 vol. 2: 80). In fact, Conrad’s portrayal of Lord Jim has a lot in common with Turgenev’s tragic romantic idealist Rudin (see Sokołowska 1999: 113-130), who, in his tum, parallels that of his real-world counterpart, Mikhail Bakunin. Conrad, who possessed a historical and political consciousness, was also familiar with the biographies of political men like Bakunin who may bear superficial resemblance to Conrad’s Peter Ivanovitch in Under Western Eyes or Michaelis in The Secret Agent. Conrad’s Razumov fell in love with the sensible, conscientious, dignified and selfless Natalia with trustful eyes, but he had to resist her love because he was not worthy of her. Similarly, desperate Turgenev’s Nezhdanov, who loves his wife, but has doubts about his dedication to the cause, decides to commit suicide. Under Western Eyes (1911), Conrad’s great political novel about tsarist Russia is presented in the 1920 “Authors Notę” as “an attempt to render not so much the political State as the psychology of Russia itself’ (Conrad 1923: viii). In a letter of 29 October 1921 to Edward Gamett, Conrad declared that in writing his novel he was “concemed with nothing but ideas” (Collected Letters... 1983-2008 vol. 4: 489), and he denied any knowledge of the Russians, so it comes as no surprise that things Russian in the novel are viewed by Western eyes. Conrad certainly hated the tsarist autocracy, but in his fiction he never hated the Russian people. Razumov, a very ambitious student at the University of St. Petersburg and the illegitimate son of Prince K - and an archpriesfs daughter, now dead. He has no family, no home to give him political sympathies and opinions. His life is transformed when he arrives home one evening to find his fellow student Haldin, a revolutionary and assassin, waiting for him in his fiat. When Victor Haldin appears before Razumov and announces that he had assassinated the Minister of Justice, the latter sees physical conseąuences of not giving him in to the police - imprisonment, ill-treatment, restricted residence in provinces. He is tormented by his decision to tum Haldin in to the police. It is a situation in which neither of the possible decisions is satisfactory. The “brain” does not appear to offer a solution. He informs the authorities and is soon enmeshed in a web of counter-espionage and revolutionary intrigue.

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When Razumov goes to Geneva as a police spy, instructed to infiltrate a revolu- tionary group, he lives in a State of perpetual unease, feeling severed from his identity:

It was as if your pure brow borę a light which fell on me, searched my heart and saved me from ignominy, from ultimate undoing. And it saved you too. Pardon my presumption. But there was that in your glances which seemed to tell me that you ... Your light! Your truth! I felt that 1 must tell you that 1 had ended by loving you. And to tell you that I must first confess. Confess, go out - and perish. (Conrad 1923: 179)

When meeting Haldin’s sister, Natalia, for the first time he averts his gazę and on a subseąuent occasion "did not look into her eyes which were so ready for him” (Conrad 1923: 179). Razumov’s reluctance to look into Natalia’s eyes lies in his sense of shame.When confronted by Haldin’s sister, Razumov ftnds his words poisoned, a part of a morally tainted world in which he speaks “with visible repugnance, as if speech were something disgusting or deadly” (Conrad 1923: 346). But, later on, Razumov has discovered his place in society; namely, within the growing relationship with Natalia. She becomes the only place where he can ftnd community, the only person who can understand him. “Do you know why I came to you? It is simply because there is no one anywhere in the whole great world I could go to” (Conrad 1923: 353-354). While Natalia’s ability to act, to bring about a notable social change, is indeed limited by her naivete, she represents perhaps the sole gleam of light in a world dark with duplicity and torn by the conflicting interests of those who are potentially self-serving. And, as Conrad suggests through Natalia's enlightening effect on Razumov, it is this kind of guiding ideał that mankind needs in order to transcend selfishness and self-destruction. Only through Natalia’s truthfulness can Razumov see the baseness of his attempts to protect himself at the expense of others; only through her unselftsh, trusting naturę does he begin to sense the importance of solidarity. Her “trustful eyes” (Conrad 1923: 346) which are not able to detect deceit persuade Razumov to be innocent - to reveal his guilt to her. It is elear in the course of the novel that until this moment Natalia’s existence has been largely insulated from the worst brutalities of Russian life, that she has had very little first-hand experience of suffering. Now, as she receives Razumov’s halting confession, she begins ftnally to see, and is able to inform the teacher of languages some time later that “my eyes are open at last” (Conrad 1923: 376). When Razumov suffers the fuli conseąuences of his confessions prompted by his love for Natalia, she does not visit him in hospital. We can agree that the love that prompts Razumov’s confession is itself founded largely on illusion. Moreover, if he anticipated any understanding and forgiveness from Natalia, he is mistaken. He was given the opportunity to discover that he was wrong too late. In their last encounter they “exchanged a few words about her health” as well as Razumov’s (Conrad

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1923: 372). Natalia tells him that she has accepted his advice and will return permanently to Russia. In Under Western Eyes, then, Conrad describes the kind of idealism that leads to abstractions, but he hints through the portrait of Natalia Haldin that unselfish commitment to others is what distinguishes the feminine attitude from the masculine impulse. In the view of the language teacher, Natalia is “so true, so honest, but so dangerously inexperienced!” (Conrad 1923: 142). It means she is true: trustworthy, honest, fuli of integrity, but, being inexperienced, she cannot know the truth. Natalia also describes herself to Razumov as ignorant but trustworthy (Conrad 1923: 181). We can agree that Conrad typically wishes to focus on one dominant ąuality, and indeed all the portraits in Under Western Eyes may be seen to partake of a peculiar obsessiveness, a singleness of purpose that identifies Conrad's conception of the Russian temperament. While Natalia may represent the catalyst of Razumov’s self-recognition, Mrs Haldin herself plays a fundamental role in encouraging him to confess. Although she never articulates her suspicions, Razumov senses her disbelief in his story after their meeting, and, when confronted with Natalia, realises there is no escape from an admission and guilt. In this case, the concealment becomes unbearable to Razumov who cannot forget his crime and in the end confesses it to Natalia and the assembled Russian revolutionaries. In his diary, beginning with the revelation that he was originally prompted by a desire to steal the soul of Haldin's sister, Razumov acknowledged his gradual recognition of her trustful and loving naturę: “I’ve never known any kind of love” (Conrad 1923: 360). It comes as no surprise that Turgenev may have despaired any change in Russia in the 1860s, but, as the revolutionary tide began to rise, he undertook “a pene- trating analysis of the Russian revolutionary movement” (Schapiro 1978: 263), and the dedication of the young revolutionaries whom he portrayed in Yirgin Soil. His protagonist Nezhdanov is, like Razumov, the illegitimate son of Prince G., “a rich adjutant-general, and of his daughter’s govemess, a pretty ‘institute girl’, who had died on the day of his birth” (Turgenev 2000: 33). Nezhdanov’s and Razumov’s lack of family makes them morę acceptable as symbolic characters, sińce the archetypal hero typically has an obscure parentage. Not possessing a secure self-image or an immediate intuition of an autonomous personality, Nezhdanov, like Razumov, cannot perceive himself except vicariously and is therefore entirely dependent on his sense of identity upon his status in the social world and his standing in the eyes of others. But, at the same time, the young man, who is able to establish his identity only through other people’s perception of him, is condemned to move through a world teeming with eyes, a universe of observation directed always at himself. In going among the people, as Nezhdanov understood his mission, he had little use of his aristocratic birth and his efforts to politicise the people merely amount to adopting their clumsy dress and their depraved passion for cheap vodka. He feels

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“like a bad actor in the wrong part” (Turgenev 2000: 270), and secretly longs to give up politics for his art. He writes political pamphlets, but he is also disillusioned. His yeamings to be understood recall the very similar inner ery - “I want to be understood” (Conrad 1923: 39) - of Conrad’s Razumov. Soon Nezhdanov realised that he was one of the isolated group of dreamers who had read only their own aspirations to the Russian people. “Ali are asleep!” runs like a refrain through Nezhdanov’s poem “Sleep”, only the “Tsar’s gin-shop never closes an eye” (Turgenev 2000: 275). “Our people are asleep,” Nezhdanov writes in his postscript. “I fancy if anything ever does wake it” is the implied ąuestion (275). He admits to the “exquisite girl” (124) Marianna who loves him - “a poor homeless devil” (Conrad 1923: 124), that he lost all his political illusions and does not “believe in the cause itself ’ (332). Turgenev’s Marianna, like Conrad’s Natalia - a woman with true and honest naturę, has “pure, passionate nature”(142). She is for Nezhdanov, like Natalia for Razumov, “the incamation of everything good and true on earth - the incamation of all the love of mother, sister, wife, that he [knew] nothing of - the incamation of fatherland, happiness, stmggle, freedom” (124). Marianna is very devoted to the cause and is “ready to do anything that is wanted, to go where [she is] ordered... The thirst for activity, for sacrifice, immediate sacrifice - that was what mastered her” (Turgenev 2000: 217). Similarly, Conrad's Miss Haldin in the end becomes a social worker in a town in central Russia “sharing her compassionate labours between the horrors of over- crowded jails, and the heartrending misery of bereaved homes. She did not spare herself in good service” (Conrad 1923: 378).The heroine chooses to leave the unreal situation, where revolution and reform are merely the subjects of discussion. Turgenev’s Marianna still believed in the movement, but it was impossible for her to believe any longer in her hero. It was for Solomin, who decided to continue in an indirect and cautious fashion the work over which the young student had so hideously blundered. But Nezhdanov could not even pretend to believe now. His personal eąuation was already solved: for him the masąuerade was over. Nezhdanov thmst something into his pocket, went out and stood meditatively under an old apple tree. All around him was still, like the life of the Russian people. “Then Nezhdanov, glancing through the crooked branches of the tree under which he was standing, at the Iow, grey, callously blind, damp sky, yawned, shrugged, thought, ‘There’s nothing else left - I’m not going back to Petersburg, to prison’, he flung away his cap and “put the revolver to his breast, pulled the trigger...” (Turgenev 2000: 338-339). He shoots himself, leaving a long letter to Marianna and Solomin, urging them to marry. His motive for suicide is not fear of arrest, but the culmination of the tragic indecision of his life - doubts about his dedication to the cause and about his love for Marianna - the bitter predicament of the man, who is by his naturę denied the capacity of positive action, the tragedy of Hamlet who longs to be a Don Quixote. There is also a suggestion that Nezhdanov feels he is overshadowed by Solominin Marianna’ s regard, although neither of them in any

Pobrano z https://repo.uni.opole.pl / Downloaded from Repository of Opole University 2021-10-01 22 Brygida Pudełko way has been disloyal to the unhappy young man. The discovery of the mistrust worthiness of language came too late to Nezhdanov. If words are not to be trusted, there is no sense in life for him and he commits suicide. Whereas Nezhdanov symbolizes the alienated and misunderstood individual who is seen in bad light, and therefore ignored and rejected by society, Marianna, like Natalia, is morę determined, morę self-sacrificing than Turgenev’s and Conrad’s weak małe heroes. Both women are not satisfied with the duli, banał life in their own noble families and long for a wider sphere of action. They want to know life in its broader phases. Both heroines utilize the freedom of their circumstances to cultivate their morał sensibility, but when they act at last - they all make important practical decisions - it is with the carefully nurtured personality. Their acts are a spontaneous overflow of the potential they have discovered in themselves. Marianna finds her vocation in serving the revolutionary cause, and Conrad’s Natalia also becomes a social worker. All these women will share the anonymous burden unilluminated by glory, serving without a personal reward. Finally, all the women found the way to do good in selfless service.They are ąuiet, steadfast women, asking nothing for themselves, seeking only to give. Everything which Turgenev and Conrad denied to their weak men they granted abundantly to their heroines, whose love was inseparable from sacrifice.

Works cited

Collected Letters o f Joseph Conrad, The. 1983-2008, 9 vols., eds. F.R. Karl, L. Davies, O. Knowles, G.M. Moore and J.H. Stape, Cambridge. Conrad J., 1921, Notes on Life and Letters, London. Conrad J., 1923, Under Western Eyes, London. Gamett E., 1995, Introduction to Ivan Turgenev, On the Eve, [in:] lvan Ttirgenev and Britain, ed. P. Wadding- ton, Oxford, pp. 129-133. Jean-Aubry G., 1927, Joseph Conrad. Life and Letters, 2 vols. London. Schapiro L., 1978, Turgenev. His Life and Times, Oxford. Sokołowska K., 1999, Artistic Aspects o f Character Creation in Lord Jim by Conrad and Rudin by Turgenev, [in:] Joseph Conrad: East European, Polish and Worldwide. Conrad: Eastern and Western Perspectives, vol. viii, gen. ed., W. Krajka, New York. pp. 113-130. Turgenev I., Yirgin Soil, 2000, trans. Constance Gamett, New York. Waddington P., 1995, Some Silent Phases o f Turgenev’s Critical Reception in Britain: Part I, 1853—1870; Part II, 1870—1883, [in:] Ivan Turgeney and Britain, ed. P. Waddington, Oxford, pp. 1-56.

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