“A SPORTSMAN’S SKETCHES”—“NATURE
AND MAN”—THE SECRET OF TURGENEV’S ART

At this date, 1847, Russia, long prostrate beneath the drill sergeants of that “paternal” autocrat Nicholas I.,[12] with the lynx-eyed police rule, servile press and general atmosphere of bureaucratic subservience stupefying the country, was slowly awakening to the new ideas of reform. Grigorovitch’s novel The Village (1846), which painted the wretched life of the serfs, marked the changing current of social ideas, but to Turgenev was to fall the honour of hastening “the Emancipation.” There is perhaps a little exaggeration in this eloquent passage of M. de VogÜÉ: “Russia saw its own image with alarm in the mirror of serfdom held towards it. A shiver passed through the land: in a day Turgenev became famous, and his cause was half won.... I have said that serfdom stood condemned in everybody’s heart, even in the Emperor Nicholas’s.” But we are assured by Turgenev himself that Alexander II.’s resolution to abolish serfdom was due in no small part to A Sportsman’s Sketches. The old generation in fact was soon to pass away with Nicholas’s rule. As the sketch “The Peasant Proprietor Ovsyanikov” demonstrates, to this old race of landowners, frankly despotic in their manners, was succeeding a milder class—one which “did not like the old methods,” but was ineffective and self-distrustful. And it was to this younger Russia in silent protest against the “official nationalism” prescribed by the ministers of Nicholas, and against the stagnation of provincial life which Gogol had satirized so unsparingly in Dead Souls (1842), that Turgenev made his appeal with his first sketch “Hor and Kalinitch” in the magazine The Contemporary. Turgenev’s reputation was made, and Byelinsky, who declared that Turgenev was “not a creator but a painter of realities,” immediately predicted his future greatness. The other, A Sportsman’s Sketches, as they appeared, one by one, were eagerly seized on by the public, who felt that this new talent was revealing deep-welling springs of individuality in the Russian nature, hitherto unrecorded.

Though Russian society was profoundly moved by Turgenev’s picture of serfdom, it was in truth the triumph of the pure artist, of the writer who saw man’s fugitive life in relation to the vast, universal drama of nature, that made A Sportsman’s Sketches acceptable to all. One may compare the book’s atmosphere to some woodland’s tender morning air quivering with light, which transmits the ringing voices of men in all their meaning inflections. The voices rise, in joy or strife or passion, then die away in silence, and we hear the gentle stir and murmur of the leaves as the wind passes, while afar swells the roar of the deep forest. Turgenev’s spiritual vision resembles this silvery light and air which register equally the most exquisite vibration of human aspiration and the dissonance of men’s folly and misery. The sweet and tender depths of the author’s spirit served, so to say, as a sensitive mirror which reflected impassively the struggle between the forces of worldly craft and the appeal of all humble, neglected and suffering creatures. “The Tryst” is an example of the artist’s exquisite responsiveness both to the fleeting moods of nature and the conflicts of human feeling. Thus the sufferings of the young peasant girl, poor Akoulina, at the hands of her conceited lover, the pampered valet, Viktor, are so blended with the woodland scene and our last view of “the empty cart rattling over the bare hillside, the low sinking sun in the pale clear sky, the gusty wind scudding over the stubble fields, the bright but chill smile of fading nature,” that one can scarcely dissociate the girl’s distress from the landscape. An illusion! but one that great literature—for example, the Odyssey—fosters. When we look over the face of a wide-stretching landscape each tiny hamlet and its dwellers appear to the eye as a little point of human activity, and each environment, again, as the outcome of an endless chain of forces, seen and unseen in nature. Man, earth and heaven—it is the trinity always suggested in the work of the great poets.

But the vast background of nature need not be always before the eyes of an audience. In “The Hamlet of the Shtchigri District,” for instance, where—through the railings of an embittered man against the petty boredom of provincial life, together with a characteristically Russian confession of his own sloth and mediocrity—we breathe the heated air of a big landowner’s house, the window on nature is, so to say, shut down. So in “Lebedyan” the bustle and humours of a horse-fair in the streets of a small country town, and in “The Country House” the sordid manoeuvres of the stewards and clerks of the lazy landed proprietor, Madame Losnyakov, against their victims, the peasants on the estate, exclude the fresh atmosphere of forest and steppe. But even so we are conscious that the sky and earth encompass these people’s meetings in market-place and inns, in posting-stations, peasants’ huts and landowners’ domains, and always a faint undertone murmurs to us that each generation is like a wave passing in the immensity of sea. Sometimes, as in “The District Doctor,” a tragedy within four walls is shut in by a feeling of sudden night and the isolation of the wintry fields. Sometimes, as in “Biryuk,” the outbreak of a despairing peasant is reflected in the fleeting storm-clouds and lashing rain of a storm in the forest. But the people’s figures are always seen in just relation to their surroundings, to their fellows and to nature.

By the relations of a man with his neighbours and their ideas, a man’s character is focussed for us and his place in his environment determined. Thus in “Raspberry Spring” the old steward Tuman’s complacent panegyrics on the lavish ways of his former master, a grand seigneur of Catherine’s time, are a meaning accompaniment to the misery of Vlass the harassed serf. Vlass has just returned from his sad errand to Moscow (his son has died there penniless), where he has had his master’s door shut in his face, and he has been ordered to return and pay the bailiff his arrears of rent. Whether under the ancient rÉgime of Catherine, or of Nicholas I., Vlass is the “poor man” of Scripture whose face is ground by the rich. All the irony of poor Vlass’s existence steals upon us while we hear the old steward’s voice descanting on the dead count’s sumptuous banquets, on his cooks and fiddlers and the low-born mistresses who brought him to ruin; while the humble peasant sits still and hears, too, of the “embroidered coats, wigs, canes, perfumes, eau de cologne, snuff-boxes, of the huge pictures ordered from Paris!” It is the cruelty, passive or active, innate in the web of human existence that murmurs here in the bass.

The parts in just relation to the whole scheme of existence, that is the secret of Turgenev’s supremacy, and what a piercing instinct for the relative values of men’s motives and actions is revealed by his calm, clear scrutiny! Observe in “The Agent” how the old serf Antip’s weeping protest against his family’s ruin at the hands of the tyrannous agent Sofron is made in the model village Shiplova, with its tidy farm-buildings and new windmill and threshing-floors, its rich stacks and hemp-fields “all in excellent order.” It is Sofron, the man of “first rate administrative power,” so honey-tongued before the gentry, who farms four hundred acres of his own, and trades in horses and stock and corn and hemp, it is this petty despot in his prosperity who “is harrying the peasants out of their lives.” “He is sharp, awfully sharp, and rich, too, the beast!” says the Ryabovo peasant. Behind the tyrannous bailiff Sofron is the owner of Shiplova, the polished Mr. Pyenotchkin, a retired officer of the Guards, who has mixed in the highest society. Mr. Pyenotchkin is a man comme il faut, but when he finds that his luckless footman has forgotten to warm the wine, he simply raises his eyebrows and orders his major-domo to “make the necessary arrangements”—to have Fyodor flogged! Here is progress on Western lines comfortably cheek by jowl with serfdom! Of course the sting, here, for the Russian conscience lay precisely in this juxtaposition of old and new, and in the knowledge that the most progressive landowner could exercise his legal right to sell his peasants, send a man away as a conscript, and separate him from his family. But it is well to note that only three or four of the Sportsman’s Sketches expose typical cases of a landlord’s tyranny and the anachronism of this mediaeval survival—serfdom.

One of these cases is “Yermolai and the Miller’s Wife,” a sketch which for the calm breadth of vision in its exposure of serfdom is flawless. In “Yermolai” note how Turgenev by a series of discreet intermittent touches brings his people on the scene, and how the tranquil description of the winding river, the Ista, with its stony banks and cold clear streams and rugged precipitous banks, prepares us for the story of poor Arina’s sorrows and of the self-complacent master’s tyranny. Because Madame Zvyerkoff makes it a rule never to keep married lady’s maids, poor Arina is disgraced, her lover sent away as a soldier, and she herself is married to the miller, who has offered a price for her. This distressing episode, though the central theme, is introduced subtly by a side wind after we have accompanied the narrator and the tall gaunt huntsman, Yermolai, to the Ista’s banks, where the two sportsmen are benighted and seek sleep in the outhouse of a mill. The bull-necked, fat-bellied miller sends out his wife with a message to them, and this woman with her refined, mournful eyes is none other than the unfortunate Arina, with whom Yermolai is on old, familiar terms. The sportsman-narrator, who has been dozing in the hay, wakes and soon gathers from the snatches of talk between the pair the details of Arina’s listless melancholy days after her child’s death. Her bitter situation is flashed upon us in Yermolai’s suggestion that she shall pay a visit to him in his hut when his own wife is away from home! She changes the subject and soon walks away, and Yermolai’s peasant callousness is indicated in his yawning answer to his master’s questions. Then this story of a woman’s sorrow is brought to a close by one of those exquisite nature touches which brings us back again to the infinite life of the encompassing earth and sky:

“‘And do you know her lover, Petrushka?’

“‘Piotr Vassilyevitch? Of course I know him.’

“‘Where is he now?’

“‘He was sent for a soldier.’

“We were silent for a while.

“‘She doesn’t seem very well?’ I asked Yermolai at last.

“‘I should think not! To-morrow, I say, we shall have good sport. A little sleep now would do us no harm.’

“A flock of wild ducks swept whizzing over our heads, and we heard them drop down into the river not far from us. It was quite dark, and it began to be cold; in the thicket sounded the melodious notes of a nightingale. We buried ourselves in the hay and fell asleep!”

By the descriptions of the landscape in “Yermolai and the Miller’s Wife” Turgenev subtly introduces the sense into our minds of nature’s vastness, of her infinity, of which the spectacle of man’s social injustice and distress becomes indissolubly part. Here there is nothing of the reformer’s parti-pris in the picture. Turgenev’s fluid, sympathetic perceptions blend into a flow of creative mood, in which the relations of men to their surroundings, and the significance of their actions, their feelings, their fate are seen as parts of the universal, dominating scheme of things. And this flow of mood in Turgenev is his creative secret: as when music flows from a distance to the listener over the darkening fields immediately the rough coarse earth, with all its grinding, petty monotony melts into harmony, and life is seen in its mysterious immensity, not merely in its puzzling discrepancy of gaps, and contradictions and confusions. Turgenev’s work, at its best, gives us the sense of looking beyond the heads of the moving human figures, out to the infinite horizon.

Although in Turgenev’s pellucid art each touch seems simple, the whole effect is highly complex, depending upon an infinite variety of shades of tone. Let us finish by examining his complex method in “The Singers.” In the first twenty lines the author etches the cheerless aspect of “the unlucky hamlet of Kolotovka, which lies on the slope of a barren hill ... yet all the surrounding inhabitants know the road to Kolotovka well; they go there often and are always glad to go.” It is not merely the tavern “The Welcome Resort,” but the tavern-keeper Nikolai Ivanitch that attracts them, for his shrewd alertness and geniality are an influence far and wide in the neighbourhood. Turgenev now introduces his main theme by a variation in tempo. He describes how the narrator on a blazing hot July day is slowly dragging his feet up the Kolotovka ravine towards the Inn, when he overhears one man calling to another to come and hear a singing competition between Yashka the Turk and the booth-keeper from Zhizdry. The narrator’s curiosity is stirred, and he follows the villagers into the bar-room, where he finds the assembled company, who are urging the two singers to begin. The men toss and the lot falls on the booth-keeper. Having riveted our attention, Turgenev now increases his hold on us by sketching the life and character of three village characters, “the Gabbler,” “the Blinkard” and “the Wild Master.” We examine the village audience till the booth-keeper at last steps forward and sings. For a time the booth-keeper does not evoke the enthusiasm of the critical villagers, but at last they are conquered by his bold flourishes and daring trills, and they shout their applause. The booth-keeper’s song is the triumph of technique and of training, and he carries away his hearers, while “the Gabbler” bawls: “You’ve won, brother, you’ve won!” But “the Wild Master” silences “the Gabbler” with an oath and calls on Yashka to begin. And now follows an entrancing description of the power of genius to sway the heart:

“‘Come, that’s enough; don’t be timid. For shame! ... why go back?... Sing the best you can, by God’s gift.’

“And the Wild Master looked down expectant. Yakov was silent for a minute; he glanced round, and covered his face with his hand. All had their eyes simply fastened upon him, especially the booth-keeper, on whose face a faint, involuntary uneasiness could be seen through his habitual expression of self-confidence and the triumph of his success. He leant back against the wall, and again put both hands under him, but did not swing his legs as before. When at last Yakov uncovered his face it was pale as a dead man’s; his eyes gleamed faintly under their drooping lashes. He gave a deep sigh, and began to sing.... The first sound of his voice was faint and unequal, and seemed not to come from his chest, but to be wafted from somewhere afar off, as though it had floated by chance into the room. A strange effect was produced on all of us by this trembling, resonant note; we glanced at one another, and Nikolai Ivanitch’s wife seemed to draw herself up. This first note was followed by another, bolder and prolonged, but still obviously quivering, like a harp-string when suddenly struck by a stray finger it throbs in a last, swiftly-dying tremble; the second was followed by a third, and, gradually gaining fire and breadth, the strains swelled into a pathetic melody. ‘Not one little path ran into the field,’ he sang, and sweet and mournful it was in our ears. I have seldom, I must confess, heard a voice like it; it was slightly hoarse, and not perfectly true; there was even something morbid about it at first; but it had genuine depth of passion, and youth and sweetness, and a sort of fascinating careless, pathetic melancholy. A spirit of truth and fire, a Russian spirit, was sounding and breathing in that voice, and it seemed to go straight to your heart, to go straight to all that was Russian in it. The song swelled and flowed. Yakov was clearly carried away by enthusiasm; he was not timid now; he surrendered himself wholly to the rapture of his art; his voice no longer trembled; it quivered; but with a scarce perceptible inward quiver of passion, which pierces like an arrow to the very soul of the listeners, and he steadily gained strength and firmness and breadth. I remember I once saw at sunset on a flat sandy shore, when the tide was low and the sea’s roar came weighty and menacing from the distance, a great white sea-gull; it sat motionless, its silky bosom facing the crimson glow of the setting sun, and only now and then opening wide its great wings to greet the well-known sea, to greet the sinking lurid sun: I recalled it, as I heard Yakov. He sang, utterly forgetful of his rival and all of us; he seemed supported, as a bold swimmer by the waves, by our silent, passionate sympathy. He sang, and in every sound of his voice one seemed to feel something dear and akin to us, something of breadth and space, as though the familiar steppes were unfolding before our eyes and stretching away into endless distance. I felt the tears gathering in my bosom and rising to my eyes; suddenly I was struck by dull, smothered sobs.... I looked round—the innkeeper’s wife was weeping, her bosom pressed close to the window. Yakov threw a quick glance at her, and he sang more sweetly, more melodiously than ever; Nikolai Ivanitch looked down; the Blinkard turned away; the Gabbler, quite touched, stood, his gaping mouth stupidly open; the humble peasant was sobbing softly in the corner and shaking his head with a plaintive murmur; and on the iron visage of the Wild Master, from under his overhanging brows there slowly rolled a heavy tear; the booth-keeper raised his clenched fists to his brow, and did not stir.... I don’t know how the general emotion would have ended if Yakov had not suddenly come to a full stop on a high, exceptionally shrill note, as though his voice had broken. No one called out or even stirred; every one seemed to be waiting to see whether he was not going to sing more; but he opened his eyes as though wondering at our silence, looked round at all of us with a face of enquiry, and saw that the victory was his....

“‘Yasha,’ said the Wild Master, laying his hand on his shoulder, and he could say no more.

“We stood, as it were, petrified. The booth-keeper softly rose and went up to Yakov.

“‘You ... yours ... you’ve won,’ he articulated at last with an effort, and rushed out of the room.”

An artist less consummate than Turgenev would have ended here. But the sequel immeasurably heightens the whole effect by plunging us into the mournful, ever-running springs of human tragedy—the eclipse of man’s spiritual instincts by the emergence of his underlying animalism. Observe there is not a trace of ethical feeling in the mournful close. It is simply the way of life:

“... When I waked up, everything was in darkness; the hay scattered around smelt strong, and was slightly damp; through the slender rafters of the half-open roof pale stars were faintly twinkling. I went out. The glow of sunset had long died away, and its last trace showed in a faint light on the horizon; but above the freshness of the night there was still a feeling of heat in the atmosphere, lately baked through by the sun, and the breast still craved for a draught of cool air. There was no wind nor were there any clouds; the sky all round was clear and transparently dark, softly glimmering with innumerable, but scarcely visible stars. There were lights twinkling about the village; from the flaring tavern close by rose a confused, discordant din, amid which I fancied I recognized the voice of Yakov. Violent laughter came from there in an outburst at times. I went up to the little window and pressed my face against the pane. I saw a cheerless, though varied and animated scene; all were drunk—all from Yakov upwards. With breast bared, he sat on a bench, and singing in a thick voice a street song to a dance tune, he lazily fingered and strummed on the strings of a guitar. His moist hair hung in tufts over his fearfully pale face. In the middle of the room, the Gabbler, completely ‘screwed,’ and without his coat, was hopping about in a dance before the peasant in the grey smock; the peasant, on his side, was with difficulty stamping and scraping with his feet, and grinning meaninglessly over his dishevelled beard; he waved one hand from time to time, as much as to say, ‘Here goes!’ Nothing could be more ludicrous than his face; however much he twitched up his eyebrows, his heavy lids would hardly rise, but seemed lying upon his scarcely-visible, dim, and mawkish eyes. He was in that amiable frame of mind of a perfectly intoxicated man, when every passer-by, directly he looks him in the face, is sure to say, ‘Bless you, brother, bless you!’ The Blinkard, as red as a lobster, and his nostrils dilated wide, was laughing malignantly in a corner; only Nikolai Ivanitch, as befits a good tavern-keeper, preserved his composure unchanged. The room was thronged with many new faces, but the Wild Master I did not see in it.

“I turned away with rapid steps and began descending the hill on which Kolotovka lies. At the foot of this hill stretches a wide plain; plunged in the misty waves of the evening haze, it seemed more immense, and was, as it were, merged in the darkening sky. I marched with long strides along the road by the ravine, when all at once, from somewhere far away in the plain, came a boy’s clear voice: ‘Antropka! Antropka-a-a...!’ He shouted in obstinate and tearful desperation, with long, long drawing out of the last syllable.

“He was silent for a few instants, and started shouting again. His voice rang out clear in the still, lightly slumbering air. Thirty times at least he had called the name, Antropka. When suddenly, from the farthest end of the plain, as though from another world, there floated a scarcely audible reply:

“‘Wha-a-t?’

“The boy’s voice shouted back at once with gleeful exasperation:

“‘Come here, devil! woo-od imp!’

“‘What fo-or?’ replied the other, after a long interval.

“‘Because dad wants to thrash you!’ the first voice shouted back hurriedly.

“The second voice did not call back again, and the boy fell to shouting ‘Antropka’ once more. His cries, fainter and less and less frequent, still floated up to my ears, when it had grown completely dark, and I had turned the corner of the wood that skirts my village and lies over three miles from Kolotovka ... ‘Antropka-a-a!’ was still audible in the air, filled with the shadows of the night.”

In the above passage the feeling of the shadowy earth, the mist, the great plain and the floating cries rarefies the village atmosphere of human commonness. By such a representation of the people’s figures, seen in just relation to their surroundings, to their fellows, and to nature, Turgenev’s art secures for his picture poetic harmony, and renders these finer cadences in the turmoil of life which ears less sensitive than his fail to hear! The parts in just relation to the whole scheme of human existence. Man, earth and heaven—it is the secret of the perfection of the great poets.

IV
“RUDIN”