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I admit it, granted it was by post," he concluded, almost in delirium. "Passons," he began again, five minutes later. "I don't understand Turgenev. That Bazarov of his is a fictitious figure, it does not exist anywhere. The fellows themselves were the first to disown him as unlike anyone. That Bazarov is a sort of indistinct mixture of Nozdryov and Byron, c'est le mot.
We call him charming as Pater called Athens charming. He is one of those authors whose books we love because they reveal a personality sensitive, affectionate, pitiful. There are some persons who, when they come into a room, immediately make us feel happier. Turgenev seems to "come into the room" in his books with just such a welcome presence. That is why I wish Mr.
My head and my hands tremble with weakness; my neck, as Turgenev says of one of his heroines, is like the handle of a double bass; my chest is hollow; my shoulders narrow; when I talk or lecture, my mouth turns down at one corner; when I smile, my whole face is covered with aged-looking, deathly wrinkles.
Familiar type as he is, there are thousands of his ilk in all great centres of civilisation, Panshin is individual, and we hate him as though he had shadowed our own lives. Again, Varvara herself is the type of society woman whom Turgenev knew well, and whom he both hated and feared; yet she is as distinct an individual as any that he has given us.
In his novels, Turgenev regarded it as his life-work to portray Russia truthfully, not to paint and powder and "prettify" it for show purposes, and the result was an outburst of fury on the part of those who were asked to look at themselves as real people instead of as the master-pieces of a professional flatterer.
In January 1857, Tolstoi left Moscow for Warsaw by sledge, and from there travelled by rail for Paris. In March, accompanied by Turgenev, he went to Dijon, and saw a man executed by the guillotine. He was deeply impressed both by the horror and by the absurdity of capital punishment, and, as he said, the affair "pursued" him for a long time.
The best-known novel of Turgenev, and with the possible exception of "A House of Gentlefolk," his masterpiece, is "Fathers and Children," which perhaps he intended to indicate the real dawn suggested by "On the Eve." The terrific uproar caused in Russia by this book has not yet entirely ceased. Russian critics are, as a rule, very bad judges of Russian literature.
For the first time Europe came across the Russian woman whom Pushkin was the first to paint; for the first time Europe came into contact with the Russian soul; and it was the sharpness of this revelation which accounts for the fact of Turgenev having received in the west an even greater meed of praise than he was perhaps entitled to. In Russia Turgenev attained almost instant popularity.
She argued about free love and freedom in general like a bigoted old woman, declared that Boleslav Markevitch was a better writer than Turgenev. But she was diabolically cunning and sharp, and knew how to seem a highly educated, advanced person in company.
They are his own and also universal. Any one can accept them with no more question than one accepts the Italians of Shakespeare. In the larger, non-Russian view, what should make Turgenev sympathetic and welcome to the English-speaking world, is his essential humanity.
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