A House of Gentlefolk Ivan Turgenev

A House of Gentlefolk Ivan Turgenev The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, Vol. XIX, Part 1. Selected by Charles William Eliot Copyright © 2001 Bartleby.com, Inc. Bibliographic Record Contents The Novel in Russia Biographical Note Criticisms and Interpretations I. By Emile Melchior, Vicomte de Vogüé II. By William Dean Howells III. By K. Waliszewski IV. Richard H. P. Curle V. By Maurice Baring List of Characters Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX Chapter XX Chapter XXI Chapter XXII Chapter XXIII Chapter XXIV Chapter XXV Chapter XXVI Chapter XXVII Chapter XXVIII Chapter XXIX Chapter XXX Chapter XXXI Chapter XXXII Chapter XXXIII Chapter XXXIV Chapter XXXV Chapter XXXVI Chapter XXXVII Chapter XXXVIII Chapter XXXIX Chapter XL Chapter XLI Chapter XLII Chapter XLIII Chapter XLIV Chapter XLV Epilogue The Novel in Russia PROSE fiction has a more prominent position in the literature of Russia than in that of any other great country. Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy occupy in their own land not only the place of Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot in England, but also to some degree that of Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, or Ruskin. Their works are regarded as not merely diverting tales over which to spend pleasantly an idle hour, but as books full of suggestive and inspiring teaching on moral and social questions. “Fathers and Children” and “Crime and Punishment” are discussed and read not merely for their artistic merit, as reflections of Russian life, but as trenchant criticisms of that life. The difference is of course one of degree not of kind: Dickens and George Eliot have a definite attitude towards social questions, and in Russian literature there are writers who may be compared to Carlyle and Matthew Arnold. The fact remains, however, that while Turgenev and Dostoevsky find readers by their power as artists, discussion of them is less apt to turn on their purely Æsthetic qualities than on the ethical and social point of view which, in part unconsciously, they show in their work. This serious character of Russian fiction is due in some degree to the development of Russian literature under a despotism that forbade or at least hampered open discussion of public questions. Russians could not discuss with any freedom, either on the debating platform or in the periodical press, such questions as the emancipation of the serfs or the relations of church and state. But in a novel a writer could at least indicate his point of view; he could show the callousness and inhumanity bred by serfdom, as Turgenev did in “A Sportsman’s Sketches”; he could give a sympathetic portrait of the radical young nihilists (who in the beginning were not terrorists, but materialistic skeptics, with a passion for natural science), as he did in “Fathers and Children”; or, on the other hand, he could show the havoc wrought in the minds of such young radicals by alienation from the national religion and the national traditions, as Dostoevsky did in “Crime and Punishment.” Thus the censorship, while it compelled public discussion to turn on sympathy and sentiment rather than on accurate study of social facts, really deepened the content of Russian fiction. Governmental repression merely strengthened the innate tendency of the Russians to vague, half-philosophic half-sentimental discussion of national problems. “When ten Englishmen meet,” Turgenev tells us in “Smoke,” “they immediately start talking about the submarine telegraph, the tax on paper, or methods of tanning rat skins; that is, of something positive and definite. But when ten Russians meet, the question immediately arises of the significance, the future, of Russia, and in the most general terms, without proof or result. They chew and chew on that unfortunate question, like children on a piece of rubber, without juice or sense.” Lavretsky, debates with Mihalevitch and Panshin. Raskolnikov’s meditations in justification of the crimes of gifted men, Levin’s arguments with Serge Koznyshev, are all examples of this tendency. For such discussion fiction offered a free field. Thus Russian novels are apt to have a political background. In “Fathers and Children” (1862) Turgenev draws a picture of a representative of the younger generation who boldly casts aside all political, social, and religious traditions, and, a skeptic to the core, devotes himself to science as the key to all truth. Though he does not identify himself with Bazarov, though he pitilessly portrays his crudity and intolerance, he nevertheless even against his will, arouses sympathy for the movements that he represents. Dostoevsky, when he exalts the infinite humility and submissiveness of Sonya in contrast to the moral arrogance of Raskolnikov, makes an attack on that same movement. Yet Russian novels rarely present their social message in so direct and uncompromising a form as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” or Sinclair’s “Jungle”; such plain speaking would be impossible in Russia. They are rather of the type of “David Copperfield” or Mr. Herrick’s “A Life for a Life,” presenting the ills of the social order without any very definite suggestions for its betterment. Hence the novelists have often been misunderstood and misinterpreted. Gogol, the founder of Russian realism, became the idol of the Liberal party through his satiric portraits of venal officials; he later showed his true character by an ardent defense of the autocracy and the state church and by an attack on all attempts at popular education. Tolstoy, because of his fervent support of the sanctity of marriage in “Anna Karenin,” was hastily denounced as a reactionary; the young radicals had rejected marriage as an outworn institution along with the autocracy and the state church, and were ready to distrust any man who might speak in its defense. Thus a foreign reader may safely neglect the social implications of Russian fiction over which Russian critics wrangle so fiercely. He will be more impressed by the moral earnestness of this literature. For Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy regard the men and women whom they create with such marvelous skill, not as animals, actuated merely by greed and lust and restrained from crime merely by fear of punishment, but as responsible moral beings, whose whole existence is affected by moral impulses, for whom conduct is the central part of life. This does not warp their judgment or make them untrue to the facts of life; their characters are not the puppets of the Sunday-school book, created to enforce a moral lesson, but stumbling, aspiring individuals, half clay and half something finer that animates it. They present moral forces because without them no true picture of men and women can be drawn. The ethical point of view of Russian writers is, however, far different from that familiar to men of Anglo-Saxon stock. With the word good we associate instinctively the idea of self-command, self-mastery, control over one’s animal nature. Along with our admiration for self-command we have an equally instinctive respect for practical success: a man must be virtuous, but he must so shape his virtue as to win the regard of his fellow men; if he be a reformer, he must be guided by common sense as well as by moral fervor. The brave and thoughtless heroes of Scott’s novels are only an exaggeration of the English ideal; David Copperfield is a type of it. Colonel Newcome is overtaken by misfortune in his old age, but he too is of English stock; in his earlier years he commanded respect by his energy and capacity as well as by the fine essence of a gentleman’s character. The heroes of the Russian novels, on the other hand, win our hearts by geniality and kindliness, without any Puritanic sternness, and they are usually failures in practical life. Lavretsky in “A House of Gentlefolk” is a truly Russian type; gentle and sweet of disposition, he possesses small vital force, and he sinks into oblivion without gaining any outward triumph. In “Fathers and Children” Nikolay Petrovich and his brother Pavel are likewise types of the ineffective Russian nobility, who gain our affections either by a timid gentleness or by a chivalric refinement of nature. Turgenev, speaking of his own book, remarks characteristically (in a letter of April 14, 1862) that Æsthetic feeling made him choose good representatives of the nobility as a class, that it would have been coarse and untrue to select “officials, generals, plunderers, and the like.” And when Turgenev tried to create in Bazarov a character marked by crude energy, he was not wholly successful. Bazarov’s energy is in aspiration rather than performance; like the Antony of tradition, he allows his passion for a woman to wreck his life, and his creator kills him at the close of the book rather than let him continue an ineffective, blighted existence. In Dostoevsky the case is still stronger. Raskolnikov, the hero of “Crime and Punishment,” is a weak and vacillating murderer, whose native sympathy and generosity make the reader find him a higher type of humanity than the callous business man Luzhin. Absolute humility and self sacrifice make the prostitute Sonya the most ideal figure in the volume. The Russian adulation of kindliness rather than energy, of aspiration rather than performance, is at first sight not so prominent in the works of Tolstoy. For Tolstoy was himself a man of fiery passions and of strong will. In “War and Peace” he created in Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, a hero of somewhat the English type. Yet the hero of “Anna Karenin” is not the vigorous officer Vronsky, nor the cold politician Karenin, both of whom know how to win success among men of the great world, but the clumsy farmer Levin, who attracts us by his kindly nature, and by his obstinate search for a moral ideal that shall guide him through life.

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