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What "Uncle Tom's Cabin" accomplished in this country Gogol's "Dead Souls" and Tourgenieff's "Recollections of a Sportsman" did for the Russian slaves. The disasters of the Crimean War were attributed to the corrupt condition of all classes, caused, it was claimed, by this pernicious institution of serfdom.
He may invent a theory about it afterwards; if he does not, some one else will invent it for him. There are degrees of art. One painter will put in unnecessary accessories, another will exhibit his sympathy too openly, the technique or the composition of another can be criticised. But the question is, is the picture great and effective? Mrs. Stowe had not Tourgenieff's artistic calmness.
Michel Bakounine, Kropotkine, Stepniak, Michaelov, and Sophia Perovskaya, whose handkerchief gave the signal to the assassins of Alexander II, were but actualisations of Tourgenieff's imaginary hero Bazaroff, and for a time, indeed, Bazaroffism was in literary jargon the equivalent of Nihilism.
It is in one of Tourgenieff's own prose-poems that the dialogue of the Jungfrau and the Finsteraarhorn across the centuries is darkly shadowed. The evening of the world falls upon spirits sensitive to its intimations as the diurnal twilight falls upon the hearts of travellers descending a broad stream near the Ocean and the haven of its unending rest. Cf. Philostratus, Life of Appollonius.
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