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Updated: July 4, 2025
In the pages of Gogol, Dostoievski, Tourguéneff, and Tolstoi, the majority of readers have found a world absolutely new to them; and in reading those pages, so penetrated with the dramatic spirit, they have come into the possession of a knowledge of life not formal and didactic, but deep, vital, and racial in its range and significance.
As to American literature, he said that Tourgueneff had once told him that there was nothing in it worth reading; nothing new or original; that it was simply a copy of English literature.
Let people show up and chastise the rascals, that is good, it is even moral, but let them tell us and show us the opposite; otherwise the simple reader, who is the average reader, is discouraged, saddened, horrified, and contradicts you so as not to despair. How are you? Tourgueneff wrote me that your last work was very remarkable: then you are not DONE FOR, as you pretend?
If it were less bad weather, and I had a less bad cold, I would go at once to Paris, for I want to see you there. How long do you stay there? Tell me quickly. I shall be very glad to renew my acquaintance with Tourgueneff, whom I knew a little without having read him, and whom I have since read with a whole-hearted admiration.
I have met Madame Viardot whom I found a very curious temperament. It was Tourgueneff who took me to her house. CCXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, from the 28 to the 29 February 1872. Night of Wednesday to Thursday, three o'clock in the morning. Ah! my dear old friend, what a dreadful twelve days I have spent! Maurice has been very ill.
Shakespeare gives us the word, Balzac, sometimes, after pages of vain striving, gives us the word, Tourgueneff gives it with miraculous certainty; but Henry James, no; a hundred times he flutters about it; his whole book is one long flutter near to the one magical and unique word, but the word is not spoken; and for want of the word his characters are never resolved out of the haze of nebulae.
Novels and Stories, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood, with an Introduction by Henry James, 1903, etc. LIFE: See above, Biographical Introductions to Poems in Prose and First Love; E. M. Arnold, Tourgueneff and his French Circle, translated from the work of E. Halperine-Kaminsky, 1898; J. A. T. Lloyd, Two Russian Reformers: Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, 1910.
Shakespeare gives us the word, Balzac, sometimes, after pages of vain striving, gives us the word, Tourgueneff gives it with miraculous certainty; but Henry James, no; a hundred times he flutters about it; his whole book is one long flutter near to the one magical and unique word, but the word is not spoken; and for want of the word his characters are never resolved out of the haze of nebulae.
In short I am worn out! and sad! sad enough to croak. When I have to get into action I throw myself into it head first. But my heart is breaking in disgust. That is the truth. I have seen none of our friends except Tourgueneff, whom I have found more charming than ever. Give a good kiss to Aurore for her sweet message, and let her kiss you for me. Your old friend
In this respect of careful execution the author resembles Tourgueneff, whose friend and disciple she is. Like him, and like those who have been affected by his influence, she gives attention to the minor characters and comparatively insignificant incidents, so that the book makes a really lifelike impression.
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