In Nejdanov it is another picture of that youth which we see--youth reduced to ineffectiveness by fatalism and by the egoism of the lyric nature which longs to gain dramatic freedom, but cannot achieve it.It is one of a series of portraits, wonderfully traced psychological studies of the Russian dreamers and incompatibles of last mid-century, of which the most moving figure is the hero of the earlier novel, Dimitri Rudin.If we cared to follow Turgenev strictly in his growth and contemporary relations, we ought to begin with his Sportsman's Note Book.But so far as his novels go, he is the last writer to be taken chronologically.He was old enough in youth to understand old age in the forest, and young enough in age to provide his youth with fresh hues for another incarnation.Another element of his work which is very finely revealed.and brought to a rare point of characterisation in Virgin Soil, is the prophetic intention he had of the woman's part in the new order.For the real hero of the tale, as Mr.Edward Garnett has pointed out in an essay on Turgenev, is not Nejdanov and not Solomin; the part is cast in the woman's figure of Mariana who broke the silence of "anonymous Russia." Ivan Turgenev had the understanding that goes beneath the old delimitation of the novelist hide-bound by the law--"male and female created he them."He had the same extreme susceptibility to the moods of nature.He loved her first for herself, and then with a sense of those inherited primitive associations with her scenes and hid influences which still play upon us to-day; and nothing could be surer than the wilder or tamer glimpses which are seen in this book and in its landscape settings of the characters.But Russ as he is, he never lets his scenery hide his people: he only uses it to enhance them.He is too great an artist to lose a human trait, as we see even in a grotesque vignette like that of Fomishka and Fimishka, or a chance picture like that of the Irish girl once seen by Solomin in London.
Turgenev was born at Orel, son of a cavalry colonel, in ISIS.He died in exile, like his early master in romance Heine--that is in Paris-on the 4th of September, 1883.But at his own wish his remains were carried home and buried in the Volkoff Cemetery, St.
Petersburg.The grey crow he had once seen in foreign fields and addressed in a fit of homesickness"Crow, crow, You are grizzled, I know, But from Russia you come;Ah me, there lies home!"
called him back to his mother country, whose true son he remained despite all he suffered at her hands, and all the delicate revenges of the artistic prodigal that he was tempted to take.
E.R.
The following is the list of Turgenev's chief works:
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF WORKS: Russian Life in the interior: or, the Experiences of a Sportsman, from French version, by J.D.
Meiklejohn, 1855; Annals of a Sportsman, from French version, by F.P.Abbott, 1885; Tales from the Notebook of a Sportsman, from the Russian, by E.Richter, 1895; Fathers and Sons, from the Russian, by E.Schuyler, 1867, 1883; Smoke: or, Life at Baden, from French version, 1868, by W.F.West, 1872, 1883; Liza: or, a Nest of Nobles, from the Russian, by W.R.S.Ralston, 1869, 1873, 1884; On the Eve, a tale, from the Russian, by C.E.
Turner, 1871; Dimitri Roudine, from French and German versions, 1873, 1883; Spring Floods, from the Russian, by S.M.Batts, 1874; from the Russian, by E.Richter, 1895; A Lear of the Steppe, From the French, by W.H.Browne, 1874; Virgin Soil, from the French, by T.S.Perry, 1877, 1883, by A.W.Dilke, 1878;Poems in Prose, from the Russian, 1883; Senilia, Poems in Prose, with a Biographical Sketch of the Author, by S.J.Macmillan, 1890; First Love, and Punin and Baburin from the Russian, with a Biographcal Introduction, by S.Jerrold, 1884; Mumu, and the Diary of a Superfluous Man, from the Russian, by H.Gersoni, 1884; Annouchka, a tale, from the French version, by F.P.
Abbott, 1884; from the Russian (with An Unfortunate Woman), by H.
Gersoni, 1886; The Unfortunate One, from the Russian, by A.R.
Thompson, 1888 (see above for Gersoni's translation); The Watch, from the Russian, by J.E.Williams, 1893.
WORKS: Novels, translated by Constance Garnett, 15 vols., 1894-99.1906.Novels and Stories, translated by Isabel F.Hapgood, with an Introduction by Henry James, 1903, etc.
LIFE: See above, Biograpical 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.
