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It is issuing Chukovsky's edition of Nekrasov, reprints of Tolstoy, Dostoievsky and Turgenev, and books by Professor Timiriazev, Karl Pearson and others of a scientific character, besides the complete works of Lenin's old rival, Plekhanov.
But that Turgenev was right is shown in the twentieth century by an acute German observer, Baron Von der Bruggen. In his interesting book, "Russia of To-day," he says: "All civilisation is derived from the West. . . . People are now beginning to understand this in Russia after having lost considerable time with futile phantasies upon original Slavonic civilisation.
Turgenev was always the most widely read of Russian authors, not excepting Tolstoi, who came to the front only after his death. But full recognition he had not, because he happened to produce his works in a troubled epoch of political and social strife, when the best men were absorbed in other interests and pursuits, and could not and would not appreciate and enjoy pure art.
"Dead Souls" is surely a masterpiece, but a masterpiece of life rather than of art. Even apart from its unfinished shape, it is characterised by that formlessness so distinctive of the great Russian novelists the sole exception being Turgenev.
Yet, curiously enough, Turgenev, ardent Liberal though he was, had no political motive whatsoever in view in writing his novel, his purpose simply being the delineation of certain types which were then, for good or for bad, making themselves a force in his country.
And the other "flourished his fingers and fixed his enigmatical stare into the far distance." Perhaps Turgenev meant that salvation would eventually come through a woman through women like Elena. For since her appearance, many are the Russian women who have given their lives for their country.* * See an article in the "Forum" for August, 1910.
This, no doubt, was what Turgenev meant when he asked, "Does not all prayer mean au fond a wish that in a given case two and two may not make four?"
Russian writers have brought to imaginative literature a directness in the presentation of vision, a lack of self-consciousness, strange to all Western countries, and particularly strange to us English, who of all people are the most self-conscious. This quality of Russian writers is evidently racial, for even in the most artful of them Turgenev it is as apparent as in the least sophisticated.
Some years ago we had an enormous palaver about the "art of the short story," which numerous persons who had omitted to write novels pronounced to be more difficult than the novel. But the fact remains that there are scores of perfect short stories, whereas it is doubtful whether anybody but Turgenev ever did write a perfect novel.
But if Turgenev's popularity suffered a shock in Russia from which it with difficulty recovered, in western Europe it went on increasing. Especially in England, Turgenev became the idol of all that was eclectic, and admiration for Turgenev a hallmark of good taste.... "Fathers and Children" is as beautifully constructed as a drama of Sophocles; the events move inevitably to a tragic close.
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