Read Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) Online
Authors: IVAN TURGENEV
dogs “ is an allusion to the first attempt made by our diplomatists and our Court, on the accession of Nicholas II., to reverse the traditional policy of England’s hostility to Russia. The sequel, despite the surprising ups and downs of the political barometer, was determined by Germany’s naval policy and the Anglo - French entente.
I
While On the Eve signalizes the end of the Crimea epoch and the break - up of the crushing, overwhelming regime of Nicholas, Fathers and Children is a forecast of the new Liberal movement which arose in the Russia of the ‘sixties, and an analysis of the formidable type appearing on the political horizon — the Nihilist.
Turgenev was the first man to detect the existence of this new type, the Nihilist. His own account of his discovery gives us such an interesting glimpse of his method in creative work that we transcribe a passage from his paper on Fathers and Children, written at Baden in 1869:
“It was in the month of August 1860, when I was taking sea baths at Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, that the first idea of Fathers and Children came into my head; that novel, thanks to which the favourable opinion of the younger generation about me, has come to an end 109
Many times I have heard and read in critical journals that I have only been elaborating an idea of my own. . . . For my part, I ought to confess that I never attempted to create a type without having, not an idea, but a living person, in whom the various elements were harmonised together, to work from. I have always needed some groundwork on which I could tread firmly. This was the case with Fathers and Children. At the foundation of the principal figure Bazarov was the personality of a young provincial doctor. He died not long before 1860. In that remarkable man was incarnated to my ideas the just rising element, which, still chaotic, afterwards received the title of Nihilism. The impression produced by this individual was very strong. At first I could not clearly define him to myself. But I strained my eyes and ears, watching everything surrounding me, anxious to trust simply in my own sensations. What confounded me was that I had met not a single idea or hint of what seemed appearing to me on all sides. And the doubt involuntarily suggested itself. ...”
Fathers and Children was published in the spring of 1862 in Katkoff’s paper, The Russian Messenger, the organ of the Younger Generation, and the stormy controversy that the novel immediately provoked was so bitter, deep and lasting that the episode forms one of the most interesting chapters in literary history. Rarely has so great an artist so thoroughly drawn public attention to a scrutiny of new ideas rising in its midst; rarely has so great an artist come into such violent collision with his own party thereby; never, perhaps, has there been so striking an illustration of the incapacity of the public, swayed by party passion, to understand a pure work of art. The effect of the publication was widespread excitement in both political camps. Everybody was, at the time, on the alert to see what would be the next move on the political board. The recent Emancipation of the Serfs was looked upon by Young Russia as only the prelude to many democratic measures, while the Reactionists professed to see in that measure the ruin of the country and the beginning of the end. The fast - increasing antipathy between the Old Order and the New, like a fire, required only a puff of wind to set it ablaze. And Bazarov’s character and aims came as a godsend to the Reactionists, who hailed in it the portrait of the insidious revolutionary ideas current in Young Russia; and they hastened to crowd round Turgenev, ironically congratulating the former champion of Liberalism on his penetration and honesty in unmasking the Nihilist. But we will quote Turgenev’s own words :
“I will not enlarge on the effect produced by this novel. I will only say that everywhere the word Nihilist was caught up by a thousand tongues, and that on the day of the conflagration of the Apraksinsky shops, when I arrived in St. Petersburg, the first exclamation with which I was greeted was, ‘ Just see what your Nihilists are doing! ‘ . . . I experienced a coldness approaching to indignation from people near and sympathetic to me. I received congratulations, almost caresses, from people of the opposite camp, from enemies. This confused me, wounded me; but my conscience did not reproach me. I knew very well I had carried out honestly the type I had sketched, carried it out not only without prejudice, but positively with sympathy. . . . While some attack me for outraging the Younger Generation, and promise me, with a laugh of contempt, to burn my photograph, others, on the contrary, with indignation, reproach me for my servile cringing to the Younger Generation. . . . ‘ You are grovelling at the feet of Bazarov. You pretend to find fault with him, and you are licking the dust at his feet,’ says one correspondent. Another critic represented M. Katkoff and me as two conspirators, ‘ plotting in the solitude of our chamber our traps and slanders against the forces of Young Russia.’ An effective picture! . . . My critics called my work a pamphlet, and referred to my wounded and irritated vanity. ... A shadow has fallen on my name. I don’t deceive myself. I know that shadow will remain.”
Politics is a game where the mistakes and admissions of your adversary are your good character in public opinion — a definition which goes far to account for the easy predominance of the political sharper, — and so Turgenev, the great artist, he who, in creating Bazarov for an ungrateful public, to use his own words, “ simply did not know how to work otherwise,” found to his cost. The Younger Generation, irritated by the public capital made out of Bazarov and his Nihilism by “ the Fathers,” flew into the other extreme, and refused to see in Bazarov anything other than a caricature of itself. It denied Bazarov was of its number, or represented its views in any way; and to this day surviving Nihilists will demonstrate warmly that the creation of his sombre figure is “ a mistake from beginning to end.” The reason for this wholesale rejection of Bazarov is easy to account for; and Turgenev, whose clear - sightedness about his works was unaffected either by vanity, diffidence or the ignorant onslaughts of the whole tribe of minor critics, penetrates at once to the heart of the matter :
“The whole ground of the misunderstanding lay in the fact that the type of Bazarov had not time to pass through the usual phases. At the very moment of his appearance the author attacked him. It was a new method as well as a new type I introduced — that of Realizing instead of Idealizing. . . . The reader is easily thrown into perplexity when the author does not show clear sympathy or antipathy to his own child. The reader readily gets angry. . . . After all, books exist to entertain.”
An excellent piece of analysis and a quiet piece of irony this! The character of Bazarov was in fact such an epitome of the depths of a great movement that the mass of commonplace educated minds, the future tools of the movement, looked on it with alarm, dislike and dread. The average man will only recognize his own qualities in his fellows, and endow a man with his own littlenesses. So Bazarov’s depth excited the superficiality of the eternally omnipresent average mind. The Idealists in the Younger Generation were mortally grieved to see that Bazarov was not wholly inspired by their dreams; he went deeper, and the average man received a shock of surprise that hurt his vanity So the hue and cry was raised around Turgenev, and raised only too well. Bazarov is the most dominating of Turgenev’s creations, yet it brought upon him secret distrust and calumny, undermined his influence with those he was with at heart, and went far to damage his position as the leading novelist of his day. The lesson is significant. No generation ever understands itself; its members welcome eagerly their portraits drawn by their friends, and the caricatures drawn of their adversaries; but to the new type no mercy is shown, and everybody hastens to misunderstand, to abuse, to destroy.
So widely indeed was Bazarov misunderstood that Turgenev once asserted, “ At this very moment there are only two people who have understood my intentions — Dostoevsky and Botkin.”
And Dostoevsky was of the opposite camp — a Slavophil.
II
What, then, is Bazarov?
Time after time Turgenev took the opportunity, now in an article, now in a private or a public letter, to repel the attacks made upon his favourite character. Thus in a letter to a Russian lady1 he says :
“What, you too say that in drawing Bazarov I wished to make a caricature of the young generation. You repeat this — pardon my plain speaking — idiotic reproach. Bazarov, my favourite child, on whose account I quarrelled with Katkoff; Bazarov, on whom I lavished all the colours at my disposal; Bazarov, this man of intellect, this hero, a caricature! But I see it is useless for me to protest.”
And in a letter addressed to the Russian students at Heidelberg he reiterates :
“Flatter comme un caniche, I did not wish; although in this way I could no doubt have all the young men at once on my side; but I was unwilling to buy popularity by concessions of this kind. It is better to lose the campaign (and I believe I have lost it) than win by this subterfuge. I dreamed of a sombre, savage and great 1 Souvenirs sur TourguSneff, 1887.
figure, only half emerged from barbarism, strong, mechant and honest, and nevertheless doomed to perish because it is always in advance of the future. I dreamed of a strange parallel to Pugatchev. And my young contemporaries shake their heads and tell me, ‘ Vous etes foutu, old fellow. You have insulted us. Your Arkady is far better. It’s a pity you haven’t worked him out a little more.’ There is nothing left for me but, in the words of the gipsy song, ‘ to take off my hat with a very low bow.’“
What, then, is Bazarov?
Various writers have agreed in seeing in him only “ criticism, pitiless, barren, and overwhelming analysis, and the spirit of absolute negation,” but this is an error. Representing the creed which has produced the militant type of Revolutionist in every capital of Europe, he is the bare mind of Science first applied to Politics. His own immediate origin is German Science interpreted by that spirit of logical intensity, Russian fanaticism, or devotion to the Idea, which is perhaps the distinguishing genius of the Slav. But he represents the roots of the modern Revolutionary movements in thought as well as in politics, rather than the branches springing from those roots. Inasmuch as the early work of the pure scientific spirit, knowing itself to be fettered by the superstitions, the confusions, the sentimentalities of the Past, was necessarily destructive, Bazarov’s primary duty was to Destroy. In his essence, however, he stands for the sceptical conscience of modern Science. His watchword is Reality, and not Negation, as everybody in pious horror hastened to assert. Turgenev, whose first and last advice to young writers was, “ You need truth, remorseless truth, as regards your own sensations,” was indeed moved to declare, “ Except Bazarov’s views on Art, I share almost ail his convictions.” The crude materialism of the ‘sixties was not the basis of the scientific spirit, it was merely its passing expression; and the early Nihilists who denounced Art, the Family and Social Institutions were simply freeing themselves from traditions preparatory to a struggle that was inevitable. Again, though Bazarov is a Democrat, perhaps his kinship with the people is best proved by the contempt he feels for them. He stands forward essentially as an Individual, with the “ isms “ that can aid him, mere tools in his hand; Socialist, Communist or Individualist, in his necessary phases he fought this century against the tyranny of centralized Governments, and next century he will be fighting against the stupid tyranny of the Mass. Looking at Bazarov, however, as a type that has played its part and vanished with its generation, as a man he is a new departure in history. His appearance marks the dividing - line between two religions, that of the Past — Faith, and that growing religion of to - day — Science. His is the duty of breaking away from all things that men call Sacred, and his savage egoism is essential to that .duty. He is subject to neither Custom nor Law. He is his own law, and is occupied simply with the fact he is studying. He has thrown aside the ties of love and duty that cripple the advance of the strongest men. He typifies Mind grappling with Nature, seeking out her inexorable laws, Mind in pure devotion to the What Is, in startling contrast to the minds that follow their self - created kingdoms of What Appears and of What Ought to Be. He is therefore a foe to the poetry and art that help to increase Nature’s glamour over man by alluring him to yield to her; for Bazarov’s great aim is to see Nature at work behind the countless veils of illusions and ideals, and all the special functions of belief which she develops in the minds of the masses to get them unquestioning to do her bidding. Finally, Bazarov, in whom the comfortable compromising English mind sees only a man of bad form, bad taste, bad manners and overwhelming conceit, finally, Bazarov stands for Humanity awakened from century - old superstitions and the long dragging oppressive dream of tradition. Naked he stands under a deaf, indifferent sky, but he feels and knows that he has the strong brown earth beneath his feet.
This type, though it has developed into a network of special branches to - day, it is not difficult for us to trace as it has appeared and disappeared in the stormy periods of the last thirty years. Probably the genius and energy of the type was chiefly devoted to positive Science, and not to Politics; but it is sufficient to glance at the Revolutionary History, in theory and action, of the Continent to see that every movement was inspired by the ideas of the Bazarovs, though led by a variety of leaders. Just as the popular movements for Liberty fifty years earlier found sentimental and romantic expression
in Byronism, so the popular movements of our time have been realistic in idea, and have looked to Science for their justification. Proudhon, Bakunin, Karl Marx, the Internationals, the Russian Terrorists, the Communists, all have a certain relation to Bazarov, but his nearest kinsmen in these and other movements we believe have worked, and have remained, obscure. It was a stroke of genius on Turgenev’s part to make Bazarov die on the threshold unrecognized. He is Aggression, destroyed in his destroying. And there are many reasons in life for the Bazarovs remaining obscure. For one thing, their few disciples, the Arkadys, do not understand them; for another, the whole swarm of little interested persons who make up a movement are more or less engaged in personal interests, and they rarely take for a leader a man who works for his own set of truths, scornful of all cliques, penalties and rewards. Necessarily, too, the Bazarovs work alone, and are given the most dangerous tasks to accomplish unaided. Further, they are men whose brutal and breaking force attracts ten men where it repels a thousand. The average man is too afraid of Bazarov to come into contact with him. Again, the Bazarovs, as Iconoclasts, are always unpopular in their own circles. Yesterday in political life they were suppressed or exiled, and even in Science they were the men who were supplanted before their real claim was recognized, and to - day, when order reigns for a time, the academic circles and the popular critics will demonstrate that Bazarov’s existence was a mistake, and the crowd could have got on much better without him.