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 sets out to denounce and deny everything, but it fails to dismiss passionate love—or to reconcile this love with his opinions regarding the simple animal character of love. Love turns out to be something more than man's biological pastime. The romantic fire that suddenly envelops his soul shocks him; but it satisfies the requirements of true art, since it stresses in Bazarov the logic of universal youth which transcends the logic of a local system of thought—of, in the present case, nihilism.
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Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature
Turgenev, as it were, takes his creature out of a self-imposed pattern and places him in the normal world of chance. He lets Bazarov die not from any peculiar inner development of Bazarov's nature, but by the blind decree of fate. He dies with silent courage, as he would have died on the battlefield, but there is an element of resignation about his decay that goes well with the general trend of mild submission to fate which colors Turgenev's whole art.
The reader will notice —I will direct his attention to those
passages in a moment—that the two fathers and the uncle
in the book are not only very different from Arkadi and
Bazarov, but also different from each other. One will also
note that Arkadi, the son, is of a much gentler and simpler
and more routine and normal nature than Bazarov. I shall
look through a number of passages that are especially vivid