RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN The Poetics of Superfluity Narrative and Verbal Art in the Novels of Ivan Turgenev Proefschrift ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de Letteren aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, dr. F. Zwarts, in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 11 mei 2006 om 16.15 uur door Marije Janet Oudshoorn geboren op 18 juli 1977 te Zwolle Promotor: Prof. dr. J.J. van Baak Co-promotor: Dr. S. Brouwer Beoordelingscommissie: Prof. dr. R.G. Grübel Prof. dr. J.H. Lintvelt Prof. dr. W.G. Weststeijn ISBN: 90-367-2616-6 The Poetics of Superfluity Narrative and Verbal Art in the Novels of Ivan Turgenev Marije Oudshoorn Groningen 2006 Copyright © Marije Janet Oudshoorn, 2006 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Foto omslag: Libel, © C. Oudshoorn Contents Preface Introduction 1 Chapter One – Methodology 5 1.1 Turgenev’s world view and its expression in his work 5 1.2 A different model 8 1.3 The method of textual analysis 9 1.4 Poetic prose 16 Chapter Two – Rudin 25 2.1 Introduction 25 2.2 The contemporary level 28 2.3 Ice and fire 32 2.4 Fruit bearing similes 34 2.5 Traveling prince or wandering Don Quixote 36 2.6 Animal associations 38 2.7 Conclusions 40 Chapter Three – A Nest of Gentry 43 3.1 Introduction 43 3.2 The laws of history 45 3.3 The laws of fate 48 3.4 Character grouping 52 3.5 Vasil’evskoe as anti-temporal locus 56 3.6 Conclusions 58 Chapter Four – On the Eve 61 4.1 Introduction 61 4.2 Allusions to various types of heroes 63 4.3 The hero as victim 67 4.4 Tristan 71 4.5 Death in Venice 80 4.6 Nature 82 4.7 Conclusions 88 Chapter Five – Fathers and Sons 91 5.1 Introduction 91 5.2 Bazarov the nihilist 93 5.3 Individuality claimed 99 5.4 Transgression motifs 103 5.4.1 Associations with demonic traits 103 5.4.2 The picaresque hero 106 5.4.3 The tragic transgressor 111 5.5 Conclusions 113 Chapter Six – Smoke 115 6.1 Introduction 115 6.2 Structural differences between Smoke and the other novels 118 6.3 Litvinov ‘the Russian soul’ 123 6.4 The destructive heroine 128 6.5 Negative images of love 132 6.5.1 Enchantment 132 6.5.2 Illness 134 6.6 Motionlessness and stone 136 6.7 Conclusions 139 Chapter Seven – Virgin Soil 141 7.1 Introduction 141 7.2 The hero as archetype 146 7.2.1 Hamlet 147 7.2.2 The Poet 151 7.3 The motif of acting 153 7.4 Fate 154 7.5 Conclusions 157 Conclusion 159 Samenvatting 163 References 169 Preface The first Russian novel I read was Turgenev’s A Nest of Gentry. I was impressed by its tone, and the liveliness of the descriptions, but foremost by the actual beauty (I know no other term) of its presentation of the tragic events changing the lives of the hero and heroine. This is a quality, so I discovered upon reading more of his work, that is inherent to Turgenev’s way of describing his characters’ lives. He is profoundly interested in the role of tragedy and its effects on the human being. During the research project in which my ever-growing fascination with Turgenev culminated, and of which this book is the palpable result, I have tried to develop a model that allows for a textual analysis of the means by which Turgenev presents tragedy. I hope to have avoided taking the analysis to the point of dissecting the novels, in a fashion that would call to mind Rudin’s dissecting the other characters’ personalities in Turgenev’s first novel. I hope to have provided tools for an understanding of the novels that will only enhance their great value as aesthetic renderings of the essential themes of human existence. I want to thank everyone who has supported me during my research. I would like to name a number of persons in specific. First of all, I thank my promotor Joost van Baak for introducing me to Russian literature, for encouraging me to start the PhD project and for continuously supporting the process of its development with many good advices. We share a deep interest in nature and during our meetings we often not only discussed the field of literature, but also exchanged the experiences we had during trips into the sometimes seemingly more accessible fields that are the home of larks and roe deer. I want to thank Sander Brouwer for reading and rereading my output and for providing innumerous useful threads of thought often leading to illuminating views of both Turgenev’s and other Russian authors’ work. I owe a special debt to Allan Wilcox, who gave his time and effort to correct the English text of this dissertation. Furthermore, I thank Rainer Grübel for discussing with me parts of this study at an earlier stage and Aage Hansen Löve for answering my questions concerning his ideas on the functioning of poetic mechanisms in larger prose texts. I also want to express my gratitude to Geramé Wouters for providing me with otherwise inaccessible materials. Before turning to a discussion of the novels I have to make a few technical remarks. All translations of quotations from Russian texts are my own, unless otherwise indicated. I have chosen to spell Russian names, both of fictional characters and of real persons, according to the official transliteration (ISO/R9 – 1968). Of course, in quotations of other authors, in which Russian names occur, I have retained their spelling. Introduction Two Turgenevs? More than a century and a half has passed since Turgenev entered the literary scene. Since then he has become a renowned author, whose work is appreciated both in Russia and in the rest of the world. Yet, when one examines the reception history of Turgenev’s work, a curious phenomenon repeatedly seems to present itself. I have in mind the more or less strict separation of Turgenev’s novels from the rest of his oeuvre. The novels are regarded as Turgenev’s contributions to Russian Realism. Indeed the novels fit the credo of Realism: a depiction of the life of the Russian intelligentsia, aimed at the analysis of possible new promising types among them. The discussion of social questions, and the description of the ideas of those parties that claimed to offer answers to the main political and social problems of the time, play an important role in the novels. This element of social discussion is not found in Turgenev’s short prose. Instead the focus there is on more universal, existential problems such as the psychological effects of passion, the confrontation with (the fear of) death, and, especially in the later stories, the supernatural. The reception history of the novels has predominantly considered them in the light of the social debate that was going on at the time of their appearance. This is particularly true of their reception by Turgenev’s contemporaries, but this general approach has continued until now. Studies of the novels invariably contain a certain amount of information regarding the social and political environment in which the novels were written and received. This context serves as a reference point for evaluations of the characters and events. Examples of this approach are found not only in many Soviet studies but also in Western criticism (for instance Victor Ripp 1980 and Seeley 1991). In periods of heightened aesthetic interest in literature, such as the post-realist period, critics’ attention shifted to the short prose. Literary criticism at the beginning of the twentieth century was inclined to treat the short stories as the better part of Turgenev’s work, displaying his gift for drawing detailed psychological portraits more successfully. For example, in a contribution to the five volume History of Russian Literature of the Nineteenth Century that appeared in 1910-11, A. E. Gruzinskij states that Turgenev was more an artist than a chronicler of his time and that he was more interested in psychological portraits than in contemporary social questions. He concludes: “Turgenev was not a social writer; he was primarily a poet and artist” (“Тургенев не был ‘писателем-гражданином’ […] больше всего он был художником-поэтом” – Gruzinskij/Ovsjaniko-Kulikovskij 1911/1969: 279). In a similar fashion, Vladimir Fišer argues that, although Turgenev wrote the novels to meet the demands of Realism, he was not really interested in the social engagement of his heroes (Fišer 1920). This, he says, is evident from the novels’ structure, in which the love between hero and heroine is central while the heroes’ social activities are only noted in passing: While depicting the personal side of his heroes’ lives in his novels, Turgenev feels at home, but he seems to avoid portraying them on a wide arena of activity, although that apparently was in fact supposed to provide the basis of the novel’s design. […] Obviously, Turgenev the artist needs his heroes’ social activity only as an outside force that defines a human in a certain way. His attention is concentrated on individuals; everything else is kept at a distance. What is interesting is how an individual lives, loves and dies; for the sake of fullness and expressiveness of image conditions of time and place that are in and of themselves perhaps not very important are taken into account (Fišer 1920: 31).