Lectures on Russian literature

Madame Bovary, and to say that he and Flaubert belonged to the same literary school is a complete misconception. Neither Turgenev's readiness to tackle any social problem that happened to be a la mode, nor the banal handling of plots (always taking the easiest way) can be likened to Flaubert's severe art.

Turgenev, Gorki, and Chekhov are particularly well known outside of Russia. But there is no natural way of linking them.

However, it may be noticed perhaps that the worst of Turgenev was thoroughly expressed in Gorki's works, and Turgenev's best (in the way of Russian landscape) was beautifully developed by Chekhov.

Besides A Sportsman's Sketches and the novels, Turgenev wrote numerous short stories and long short stories or nouvelles.

The early ones are devoid of any special originality or literary quality; some of the later are quite remarkable. Among the latter 'A Quiet Backwater' and 'First Love' deserve particular mention.

Turgenev's personal life was not very happy. The great, the only true love of his life, was for the famous singer Mme.

Pauline Viardot-Garcia. She was happily married, Turgenev was on friendly terms with her family, he had no hope of personal happiness, but nevertheless he devoted all his life to her, lived whenever possible in their vicinity, gave a dower to her two daughters when they got married.

In general he was much happier living abroad than in Russia. There no radical critics gnawed the life out of him with their vigorous attacks. He was on friendly terms with Merimee and Flaubert. His books were translated into French and German.

Since he was the only Russian writer of some stature known to the Western literary circles, he was inevitably considered not only the greatest but in fact the Russian writer, and Turgenev basked in the sun and felt happy. He impressed foreigners with his charm and graceful manners, but in his encounters with Russian writers and critics he at once felt selfconscious and arrogant. He had had quarrels with Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Nekrasov. Of Tolstoy he was jealous though at the same time he greatly admired his genius.

In 1871 the Viardots settled down in Paris and so did Turgenev. In spite of his faithful passion for Mme. Viardot he felt lonely and lacked the comforts of a family of his own. He complained in letters to friends of lonesomeness, his 'cold old age,' his spiritual frustration. Sometimes Turgenev longed to be back in Russia but he lacked the will power to make such a drastic change in his life routine : a lack of will power had always been his weak point. He never had the stamina to stand up under the attacks of Russian critics who, after the publication of Fathers and Sons, never ceased being prejudiced against his new publications. However, in spite of the hostility of the critics, Turgenev was extremely popular with the Russian reading public. The readers liked his books—his novels were popular even as late as the beginning of this century; and the humane liberal feelings he professed attracted the public to him, especially the younger part of it. In 1883 he died at Bougival, near Paris, but his body was brought to Petersburg. Thousands of people followed his coffin to the cemetery.

Delegations had been sent by numerous societies, towns, universities, etc. Countless wreaths had been received. The funeral procession was almost two miles long. Thus the Russian reading public gave a final demonstration of the love it bore Turgenev during his life.

Besides being good at painting nature, Turgenev was likewise excellent at painting little colored cartoons which remind one of those seen in British country clubs: consider, for instance, the cartoons Turgenev loved to make of the fops and lions of the Russian sixties and seventies: '. . .he was dressed in the very best English manner: the colored tip of a white silk handkerchief protruded in the form of a small triangle from the flat side- pocket of his variegated jacket; his monocle dangled on a rather broad black ribbon; the dead tint of his suede gloves matched the pale gray of his check trousers.'

Then, too, Turgenev was the first Russian writer to notice the effect of broken sunlight or the special combination of shade and light upon the appearance of people. Remember that gypsy girl who, with the sun behind her, 'appeared to be of a dusky black all over as if carved in dark wood' and those 'whites of her eyes' standing out 'like silver almonds.'

These quotations are good examples of his perfectly modulated well-oiled prose which is so nicely adapted to the picturing of slow movement. This or that phrase of his reminds one of a lizard sun-charmed on a wall—and the two or three final words of the sentence curve like the lizard's tail. But generally speaking his style produces a queer effect of patchiness, just 48

Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature

because certain passages, the artist's favorites, have been pampered much more than the others and, in consequence, stand out, supple and strong, magnified, as it were, by the author's predilection among the general flow of good, clear, but undistinguished prose. Honey and oil—this comparison may be well applied to those perfectly rounded graceful sentences of his, when he settles down to the task of writing beautifully. As a story- teller, he is artificial and even lame; indeed, when following his characters, he begins to limp as that hero of his did in 'Two Country Squires.' His literary genius falls short on the score of literary imagination, that is, of naturally discovering ways of telling the story which would equal the originality of his descriptive art. Being perhaps aware of this fundamental flaw, or else being led by that instinct of artistic self-preservation that keeps an author from lingering there where he is most likely to flop, he shuns action or, more exactly, does not expose action in terms of sustained narration. His novels and stories consist mainly of conversations in diverse settings charmingly described — good long talks interrupted by delightful short biographies and dainty pictures of the countryside. When, however, he goes out of his way to look for beauty outside the old gardens of Russia, he wallows in abject sweetness. His mysticism is of the plastic picturesque sort with perfumes, floating mists, old portraits that may come alive any moment, marble pillars, and the rest. His ghosts do not make the flesh creep, or rather they make it creep the wrong way. In describing beauty he goes the whole hog: his idea of luxury turns out to be '. . . gold, crystal, silk, diamonds, flowers, fountains'; and maidens bedecked with flowers but otherwise scantily dressed sing hymns in boats, while other maidens, with the tiger skins and golden cups of their profession, romp on the banks.

The volume of Poems in Prose (1883) is his work that dates most of all. Their melody is all wrong; their luster looks cheap and their philosophy is not deep enough to justify pearl-diving. Still they remain good examples of pure well-balanced Russian prose. But the author's imagination never rises above perfectly commonplace symbols (such as fairies and skeletons); and if, at its best, his prose reminds one of rich milk, these prose poems may be compared to fudge.

It is perhaps A Sportsman's Sketches that contains some of his best writing. In spite of a certain idealization of the peasants, the book presents Turgenev's most unaffected, most genuine characters, and some extremely satisfying descriptions of scenes, people, and, of course, nature.

Of all Turgenev's characters, the 'Turgenev maiden' has probably achieved the greatest fame. Masha ('A Quiet Backwater'), Natalia (Rudin), Liza ( A Nest of Gentlefolk) vary but little among themselves and are undoubtedly contained in Pushkin's Tatiana. But with their different stories they are given more scope for the use of their common moral strength, gentleness, and not only their capacity but, I would say, their thirst to sacrifice all worldly considerations to what they consider their duty, be it complete resignation of personal happiness to higher moral considerations (Liza) or complete sacrifice of all worldly considerations to their pure passion (Natalia). Turgenev envelops his heroines in a kind of gentle poetical beauty which has a special appeal for the reader and has done much to create the general high concept of Russian womanhood.

Fathers and Sons (1862)

Fathers and Sons is not only the best of Turgenev's novels, it is one of the most brilliant novels of the nineteenth century.

Turgenev managed to do what he intended to do, to create a male character, a young Russian, who would affirm his—that character's—absence of introspection and at the same time would not be a journalist's dummy of a socialistic type.

Bazarov is a strong man, no doubt—and very possibly had he lived beyond his twenties (he is a graduate student when we meet him), he might have become, beyond the horizon of the novel, a great social thinker, a prominent physician, or an active revolutionary. But there was a common debility about Turgenev's nature and art; he was incapable of making his masculine characters triumph within the existence he invents for them. Moreover, in Bazarov's character there is behind the brashness and the will-power, and the violence of cold thought, a stream of natural youthful ardency which Bazarov finds difficult to blend with the harshness of a would-be nihilist. This nihilism