Chapter 2: The Nest of Gentlefolk
The title reflects the two central and interrelated thematic preoccupations of the novel: the problem of the ‘nobleman’ (dvorianin) in post-Decembrist, pre-reform Russia; and the question of his base, his ‘nest’ - an image into whose circularity many varied and even conflicting strands are woven. The hero, Lavretsky, is in many ways a figure typical of his time, a nobleman without a niche, a bird of passage in search of a nest. The strange quirks of his upbringing have produced a man of western culture, brought up on the French philosophes and English ‘Spartan’ values, yet he himself has the blood of the Russian common people in his veins: his mother was a peasant. Wandering in Western Europe has brought only disillusionment, which is closely associated with the breakdown of his marriage. He returns home to Russia and to his ‘nest’ in the country, and his hopes for a new life and meaningful activity are linked to his love for another woman, his distant relative Liza Kalitina. Thus Russia and the West, the Janus-like qualities of his own background, are reflected in the two loves of his life, neither of whom is ultimately attainable. Of course, at the level of the conventional novel this is a real story of frustrated love, but there is a sub-structure of symbolism in the plot which, as in the writings of Gogol and Dostoevsky, suggests the heroines, Varvara Pavlovna and Liza, as the embodiments of different ideals.1
On the face of it the texture of the writing is that of the realistic novel, yet it cannot be denied that the all-pervasive presence of nature throughout A Nest of Gentlefolk gives the work a poetic dimension, within which imagery and symbolism have a role to play. A more noticeable obstacle to the seamless flow of the realistic novel are the long digressions on the lives of the central characters and their antecedents, for which the author begs his readers’ indulgence. Indeed the very title may suggest that the reader is about to plunge into a family novel - a saga in the manner of Galsworthy or even Tolstoy, but the form of the povest’ (short novel) which Turgenev has chosen does not lend itself to such expansive treatment, nor is this his intention. The title, again, is suggestive; Turgenev's focus is narrower. It takes as its focal point the ‘nest’ - a circumscribed locus into which past material has been woven, with the intention of providing for a future generation. Nevertheless, the fact that neither the past (the digressions) nor the future (the epilogue) are convincingly integrated into the structure must be considered a weakness, and a problem that Turgenev would not successfully overcome until the writing of Fathers and Children.2
In Russian literature the ‘nest’ as a metaphor for ‘family’ goes back at least as far as The Lay of Prince Igor. One of the princes mentioned there (son of the founder of Moscow) was known in real life as Vsevolod ‘Big Nest’ because of the size of his family. The direct references in the novel itself are to the nest as place. Thus Lavretsky’s father Petr Andreich, returning perforce to the family estate after the high life of St Petersburg, is not impressed: ‘His native nest appeared to him dirty, poor and wretched; the smoky, backwoods nature of rural existence which he encountered at every step offended him; boredom gnawed at him, moreover everyone in the house, apart from his mother, regarded him with hostility’ [7, 150]. As a result he takes to the rootless life of the Russian abroad.
His son seems condemned to a similar fate after his marriage to Varvara Pavlovna. It almost seems as though a curse is put on him to this effect by the aunt, whom his wife has sought to displace as sole mistress of the estate: ‘I know who is driving me from here, from my own native nest. Only, just you remember my words, nephew: you yourself will never build a nest for yourself anywhere, you will wander a lifetime. That is what I bequeath to you’ [7, 172]. Such rootlessness is the lot of the ‘superfluous man’, and we may recall the symbol of the bird in Rudin, and the author’s own words at the end of that novel: ‘Happy is he who on nights such as this has a roof over his head, who has a warm little corner. ..May God help all unsheltered wanderers!’ [6, 368].
There is a Rudin figure in Nest of Gentlefolk, Mikhalevich, who like Rudin still speaks in the student idiom and with the phraseology of the 1830s [7, 201]. He regards himself as fortunate in having no ties, and again his symbol is the bird. On taking his leave of Lavretsky after his short visit to the estate, he draws on biblical imagery to emphasise the difference between himself and his host, comparing himself to the birds of heaven and lilies of the field [7, 206].
The prediction of Lavretsky’s aunt does indeed come true. Lavretsky is whisked away by his wife, first of all to St Petersburg, and then to Paris, where, as we are told, his wife ‘just as quickly and skilfully as in St Peterburg managed to weave herself a nice little nest’ [7, 173]. Here the diminutive form gniozdyshko (‘nice little nest’) suggests a certain irony. It is indeed a cuckoo’s nest. Through a reference in a letter to Pushkin's poem The Gypsies (a work in which, incidentally, the bird and its temporary nest is an important image of ‘freedom’) Lavretsky learns that he is a cuckold.3
Like his father before him he returns to the patrimonial estate, though not to the main house, and it almost seems as though this will become the centre of a new and productive life. Yet his aunt’s words come true. After Liza has renounced both him and the world, Lavretsky’s whereabouts are cloaked in mystery. He only returns to his homeland after eight years, when everything there has changed. If there is now a ‘nest’, it is not his; it is located on the estate, where his own ideal was so nearly realised - the estate of Liza’s mother Maria Dmitrievna. In the Epilogue we are told: ‘But the estate of Maria Dmitrievna had not passed into the hands of strangers, it had not left her family, the nest had not been devastated’ [7, 289]. Nevertheless, the ‘nest’ is unrecognisable: it is occupied by the younger generation, whom neither Lavretsky nor the reader really knows. In the Epilogue Lavretsky is an elderly stranger in a setting that once he might have made his own. If the ‘nest’ has produced children, they are not his, and he is as estranged from Ada, the one child he might have claimed, as he is from her mother.
On returning to his ‘nest’ Lavretsky had not wished to live in the main house at Lavriki, because of its association with his early married life. Instead he chooses to live in Vasilevskoe, a much smaller house with other associations: it was here that Glafira, the aunt who had doomed him to wandering, had ended her days. This does not augur well for the building of a nest, and indeed Lavretsky is more like a guest in his own house. On his first night he is given the cup that he recognises was always offered to visitors and he drinks from it ‘as though he were a guest’ [7, 189]. Lavretsky’s spirits are so low that he keeps saying to himself that he is ‘at the bottom of a river’.
On his way to Vasilevskoe his inner world is echoed in nature: ‘His thoughts slowly wandered; their contours were just as vague and confused as the contours of those high storm clouds which also appeared to be wandering’ [7, 183]. At the same time the Russian countryside had produced in him a sweet but sad feeling. The following morning this same Russian nature and life on his small estate seem to exert their own therapy:
This is the reassuring ‘circle’ of the nobleman's nest, and the very boredom of an existence which had driven his father into wandering is capable of exerting a beneficial influence over the son: ‘"My best years have been spent on the love of a woman", Lavretsky continued to muse, "May boredom here sober me up, may it calm me and prepare me so that I am able to do what I have to do unhurriedly"’ [7, 190]. The phrase he uses: delat’ delo, suggests that the aim of his life now is action, and useful work. Later in his argument with Panshin, he will give concrete expression to his image of the ploughman unhurriedly cutting his furrow: his work will be to plough the land. In the context of his musings amid nature, the clouds, which earlier were associated with the vagueness of his thoughts, now appear to have direction: ‘And once more he began to listen to the silence, not expecting anything, but at the same time it was as though he were constantly expecting something or other; silence embraced him from all sides, the sun slowly moved in a peaceful, blue sky, and the clouds gently floated along it; it seemed they knew where and why they were floating’ [7, 190].
The ‘circle’ of the nest is bounded by the circle of nature itself, the nobleman’s estate. Beyond lies a broader bound - home in an even wider sense: ‘Lavretsky could not tear himself away from the contemplation of this life that was receding and flowing away; grief about the past melted in his soul like the snow of spring, and - a strange thing! - the feeling of his native land was never as deep and as strong within him’ [7, 190].
The whole of this short chapter (chapter 20) is not only an artistic masterpiece, revealing Turgenev’s skill in the contemplative evocation of nature, but it also has a bearing on central ideas in the novel; for the nature depicted is ‘psychologised’, it is full of symbol and meaning for the contemplator: it is nature as therapy; nature the formulator of attitudes. The passage marks a turning point in Lavretsky’s life. The boredom of the ‘nest’, which drove his father to the West, reconciles Lavretsky to Russia as it is; there is something for the nobleman to do in this countryside – work, which is integral to it. Nevertheless, the rhythms of nature, life flowing ‘noiselessly, like water through marsh grasses’, also conditions the execution of the task ahead (‘the unhurried ploughing of the furrow’); he will do what he has to do unhurriedly. The inchoate thoughts and attitudes, which Lavretsky draws from his contemplation of nature will surface as ‘arguments’ in the two set disputes in the novel: the first with Mikhalevich, who will criticise the lazy rhythm of the nobleman’s activity; the second with Panshin, during which Lavretsky will formulate views that seem openly Slavophile.
The nature which so affects Lavretsky is the immediate view under his window. It is the nobleman’s garden, and it is this which throughout the novel becomes the very symbol of the ‘nest’. It forms an important motif accompanying decisive moments in Lavretsky’s life. The garden is a focal point for his thoughts on the death of his father:
Here the nobleman’s garden is associated not only with death, but with possibilities for a new life - possibilities, which, as we have seen, ultimately bring him back full circle, and to the contemplation of the nobleman’s garden with fresh eyes.
On arriving at Vasilevskoe, it is the garden, which particularly attracts his attention:
It is this garden which seems uppermost in Lavretsky’s thoughts, when he considers inviting Liza to visit him, and he consults the musician, Lemm, on the matter:
Lavretsky acts on his suggestion, luring them to the house with the promise of the presence of Lemm and a piano, the smell of lilac and the country air [7, 199].
It is Lavretsky’s garden, and more particularly its pond, which provides a formal pretext for closer acquaintance with Liza. The social framework is a fishing party, but the emotional content suggests another kind of ‘fishing’.4 Lavretsky is attempting to find out Liza’s attitude both to Panshin and to himself. The party is arranged in three groups round the pond: Liza’s mother, aided by Anton, the attentive old retainer; Lemm and the two younger girls; Lavretsky and Liza. The fishing is brisk, but Lavretsky and Liza obviously have other things on their minds: ‘Lavretsky and Liza had the fewest takes, this probably came about, because they paid less attention to the fishing than the others, and allowed their floats to swim right up to the bank’ [7,208]. It seems as though Lavretsky is presenting various ‘baits’ to Liza and that each of his utterances has a hidden ‘hook’: ‘I am a clumsy sort of fellow, but I feel that everybody must love you. Just take Lemm; he is simply in love with you’ [7, 209]. In ‘fishing’ such as this, the older man, Lemm, in love with Liza is obviously to be seen as a substitute for Lavretsky himself. Lemm’s lack of success, earlier that day (with the song he had written for Liza) can be seen to have meaning for the sense Lavretsky has of his own clumsiness, the comic figure which he feels he cuts in local society, and the gap in years between himself and Liza (shortly afterwards he will claim to be related to her as an uncle).5 His comment on Lemm’s lack of success, although presented in general terms, obviously has a relevance, which is even more particular: ‘To be young and not know how to do something is bearable; but to grow old and not to be up to it is hard, and it hurts that you don’t feel that you are losing your abilities. It’s difficult for an old man to endure such blows!’ [7,209].
Immediately, however, the demands of real fishing intervene to suggest caution and the need for attention. Lavretsky calls out to Liza: ‘Watch out, you have a bite’, but then goes on to probe her about her feelings for Panshin. He tries to gain favour by discussing religion, and comments on her happy, bright, smiling face. When Liza naively replies that at this moment she is feeling very happy, Lavretsky is seized by a sudden desire to take her hands and squeeze them. At this emotional high point the catching of real fish once more intervenes: ‘"Liza, Liza", shouted Maria Dmitrievna, "Come here, Look at what a carp I’ve caught"’ [7, 211]. Thus Liza is called away, before Lavretsky is betrayed into more overt demonstration of his feelings, and he is left to muse: ‘I am speaking to her, as though I were not a man whose life is over’ [7, 211].
The argument with Panshin, in which Lavretsky opposes Slavophile-like ideas to Panshin’s Westernism, takes place indoors, but against the ever-felt presence of the garden outside:
The argument is the equivalent of a verbal duel for the heart of Liza. Lavretsky wins because Liza is, however unconsciously, pro-Russian in her feelings, and Panshin’s apparent contempt for his native land distresses her. Lavretsky is aware of this: ‘He would not have made these objections to Panshin alone, he was speaking only for Liza’ [7, 234]. A new and far deeper understanding has now emerged between them - one that is linked to the nature outside: ‘At the same time the heart of each of them swelled in their breasts, and nothing escaped them: it was for them that the nightingale was singing, the stars were shining, and the trees were quietly whispering, lulled by sleep, the bliss of summer and the warmth’ [7, 234]. When they are briefly on their own, on their way from the apartment of Marfa Timofeevna to the salon of Maria Dmitrievna, it is again the garden which cements their new relationship: ‘Lavretsky and Liza passed through the room, and stopped before the door open on to the garden. They looked into the dark distance, then at one another - and smiled. It just seemed as though they would have held each other’s hands, and have talked and talked as much as possible’ [7, 234]. This glimpse into the garden is a prelude for what is to follow. On leaving, Lavretsky’s mood is such that he does not want to go home. Instead he walks in the countryside, following a path until he comes to a garden gate. He opens it and is surprised to find himself in the Kalitins’ garden. He sits on a seat facing the house and observes that a light is burning in Liza’s window and that downstairs the door is still open on to the garden. It strikes midnight. The light in Liza’s bedroom goes out, but at the same time a light moves through the house down to the room with the open door; it is Liza who has come to search for a book. Lavretsky calls her; she comes out into the garden and he leads her to the seat, declares his love for her and they embrace. This eerily romantic scene marks the climax of their relationship, and it is certainly fitting that it should take place in the garden.6
Yet there is other symbolism at work here too. The garden gate, which had opened ‘just as though it awaited the touch of his hand’ [7, 235] is mysteriously locked when half an hour later he retraces his steps; he has to jump over the fence. The garden gate (kalitka) phonetically echoes Liza’s own surname - Kalitina. Access to the garden, and to Kalitina herself, which the gate had so compliantly granted, has now been withdrawn; for if the romantic hour of midnight marks a lovers’ meeting, it also brings in another day, and with it will arrive Lavretsky’s estranged wife, whom, both he and Liza assume to be dead. The garden ‘of Eden’ so briefly opened to Lavretsky and Liza is banished with the advent of the serpent.
With the loss of Liza the concept of the ‘nest’ is lost forever. If it does exist, it is for a new generation, whom Lavretsky scarcely knows. When in the Epilogue he returns again to the Kalitins’ estate, it is this younger generation who are enjoying the garden, playing unsophisticated games. Lavretsky, however, is occupied merely with his memories:
The ‘cup’ recalls that symbol which had greeted his earlier return to his own estate, and the young people, who are now masters of the Kalitin estate, behave more like children than young adults (Lenochka’s fiancé is twenty four), whereas Lavretsky, for his part, seems prematurely aged. He is forty-five, but already thinks of himself as an old man. Even earlier in the novel, at the age of thirty-seven, he had considered himself old. There may be autobiographical echoes in this, as Turgenev himself constantly complained of being old even at a relatively young age.7 The exaggerated gap between the generations, however, has its rationale in the Epilogue: Lavretsky and Liza (although she is obviously much younger) belong to a generation which took life seriously. Their sufferings, it is suggested, will not be known by the more carefree generation that succeeds them. It is fitting that Lavretsky’s final leave-taking is from this garden:
It is obvious that in The Nest of Gentlefolk, as in Rudin, nature plays an underlying symbolic role. Here, too, the imagery of trees is associated with the characters themselves. Lavretsky’s main estate Lavriki, taken literally means ‘little laurels’, and lavr (‘laurel’) is the root of his own name - a hint perhaps at his ‘Spartan’ upbringing and the sense that he is destined for achievement. Yet in this he is thwarted by even more austere values: those of the monastery. The feminine form lavra means ‘monastery’.8
In Lavretsky’s first attempt to get to know Liza the platform for his ‘fishing’ is the inclined trunk of a brittle willow (rakita) and both of them are under a significant arboreal aegis (‘ the shade of a nearby lime fell on both of them’ [7, 208]). The lime is a tree associated with the nobleman’s ‘nest’, both on his own estate and that of Liza. [7, 208]. At the same time tree imagery defines his attitude to the other women in his life. Thus he tells his wife, when Maria Dmitrievna attempts to reunite them: ‘You yourself would laugh if I were to fulfil the wish of our esteemed relative, were to press you to my breast, and begin to assure you that the past had not happened, that a felled tree would again begin to flourish’ [7, 279]. A similar image had been applied to the death of his mother, uprooted from her peasant background:
Yet, nature also gives hope of regeneration. After his first meeting with Liza, Lavretsky’s thoughts, engendered by the Russian countryside, dwell on the death of his mother, the amorous indiscretions of his father, and the painful memories of his own wife. Against this background, Liza appears to him as a new life, and through the word sushchestvo (‘being’) this new life seems related to the death of that other ‘being’ – his mother: ‘"There you are", he thought, "a new being is only just entering on life. A marvellous girl"’ [7, 183]. His friend Mikhalevich comments on his need for such a ‘being’: ‘But I can see, you now need some sort of pure, unearthly being, who might wrench you from your apathy’ [7, 206].9 After the fishing party, Lavretsky accompanies Liza and her mother part of their way home, and returns through the Russian countryside. He is aware of a strange clarity of sight; it is a natural setting in which he senses the presence of something else. In Rudin nature had concealed a sigh, but here what is concealed appears to be the ‘new being.. only just entering on life’:
Other ‘romantic’ phenomena of nature, such as the moon, the stars, nightingales, play a similar symbolic role in the novel, but they are also bound up with another important motif - music. Thus the song of Panshin in chapter 4 identifies the moon as the unmoved beloved who has power over the ‘sea’ of his soul. [7, 136]. Panshin has written both the words and the music, and clearly has Liza in mind, but in matters of composition he has an obvious competitor in Lemm. On their way out to Lavretsky’s estate (chapter 22) Lemm talks about music and about Liza. Lavretsky asks him to write a libretto, and the old man considers the possibility of writing a song about the stars. He rehearses various approaches to this theme, and finally Lavretsky hears the phrase: ‘Stars, pure stars, love’. ‘"Love", Lavretsky repeated to himself, became pensive, and his heart became heavy’ [7, 195]. As they come up to Lavretsky’s house the stars are growing pale at the approach of dawn, and a nightingale sings. Lavretsky remembers the nightingale in the Kalitins’ garden, and the movement of Liza’s eyes towards the window as she heard it sing: ‘He began to think about her, and his heart grew calm. "A girl who’s pure", he said in a low voice, "Pure stars", he added with a smile, and went to bed peacefully’ [7, 196].
By the time that Liza and her mother visit the house, Lemm has written his song, and Liza will play it, but the text consists of ‘old-fashioned German words in which mention is made of the stars’ [7, 207]. Nor, unfortunately is the music a success: its attempt to express passion has failed. Later, as we have already seen, seeking to draw Liza on the comparison between the songs of Panshin and Lemm forms an important focus for Lavretsky’s ‘fishing’ shortly afterwards.
Thus, through their rival songs, Liza appears implacable as the moon to Panshin, whereas to the two older men her purity is equated with the stars. As Lavretsky returns after accompanying his guests along the road, the stars become hazy, yet the moon’s light seems firm [7, 212]. Nevertheless, when it comes to a decisive verbal duel with Panshin, the stars begin to come out, and there is also the song of the nightingale [7, 232]. At the duel’s end, Panshin in some confusion at the inept praise of Maria Dmitrievna, tries to talk about the starry sky [7, 233], whereas Lavretsky and Liza, as we have seen, believe that the stars are shining, and the nightingale singing, just for them [7, 234].
The climax of their relationship comes in the unpremeditated meeting in the nocturnal garden, but just as the fishing party had been preceded by Lemm’s unsuccessful music about the stars, the culmination of this final declaration is also the music of Lemm. On leaving the garden Lavretsky is suddenly aware of the most magnificent sounds, in whose strains ‘it seemed, there spoke and sang all his happiness’ [7, 237]. The music comes from the upper floor of the house in which Lemm lives. Lavretsky ascends, drawn towards it, and is overwhelmed: ‘These sounds so pierced into his soul, so recently shaken by the happiness of love; they, too, were aflame with love’ [7, 238]. Lemm claims, somewhat enigmatically, that he knows everything, and that his music shows this. The triumph of Lemm's talent now seems complete, but he himself is reduced to tears. Indeed, all may not be as triumphant as it seems; for although Lemm appears to have reversed his earlier failure with the ‘stars’, the setting for this triumph recalls that ‘implacable’ image of Panshin: it is a room with no other illumination than the moon.
Art, particularly music, is a touchstone for character in the novel.10 Although music was banned from his later education [7, 162], Lavretsky has retained a great love of it [7, 193]: it is emblematic of the emotional side of his nature, which his spartan upbringing could not crush. Liza, herself, plays the piano well, but she has not been endowed with natural ability, and her skill has cost great effort. For Liza, therefore, music is a mark of her determination and self-discipline [7, 243]. By contrast music appears to come easy to Panshin. He sings, plays and also composes, yet when playing a sonata with Liza, it is he who makes the mistakes [7,142]. He objects to being identified as a society man, insisting that he is an artist, and an artist in more senses than one; for he also paints, and here his attitude to art also reveals his attitude to life: ‘"In drawing, and generally in life", said Panshin, inclining his head now to the left, now to the right, "the first things are lightness and boldness"’ [7,143]. Throughout the novel there are several ironic references to Panshin as artist. Thus, we are told that there is no trace of the artist in him, once he is playing cards [7, 223], and, indeed, that he ends up far more of a civil servant than an artist [7, 287].
Lavretsky’s wife, Varvara Pavlovna, also shows great facility at the piano; she also sings. When she arrives at the house of Maria Dmitrievna, it is through music that she establishes a relationship with Panshin: ‘"Our voices must go together", she said, turning to Panshin, "Let us sing a duet"’ [7, 263]. Such singing of ‘magpies’, however, does not impress the fiercely traditional Marfa Timofeevna, who immediately senses the implications of such duets [7, 270-71]. Later, when Varvara Petrovna is established at Lavriki, Panshin will constantly be invited there to ‘perform’ with her.
It is, however, in Lemm that music finds its most serious, and at the same time, most irrational exponent. Lemm himself is shy and awkward, and the sole dedicatee of his music is Liza. In this rivalry he is the artistic counterweight to the ‘lightness and boldness’ of Panshin. Nevertheless, Panshin as artist, has yet a third sphere of activity - literature. The words of the song he composed for Liza were also written by him, and poetry is the starting point of his great debate with Lavretsky:
His recitation of Lermontov’s political poem ‘Meditation’ (Duma) leads him to his own criticisms of Russia, and provokes Lavretsky into contesting these views. There is here an echo of Lavretsky’s earlier argument with Mikhalevich, He, too, is a poet, and the declamation of one his poems had an unsettling effect on Lavretsky: ‘Lavretsky listened to him, listened to him.. the spirit of contradiction stirred within him. He was irritated by the ever ready, constantly bubbling, enthusiasm of the Moscow student. In less than a quarter of an hour an argument erupted between them’ [7, 201-2]. Yet a stanza of Mikhalevich’s poem appears to have significance for Lavretsky and his own sense of personal crisis:
Significantly, Lavretsky finds himself quoting this last couplet, when he later thinks of Liza, and the seriousness with which she treats religion [7, 201].
Literary taste is also a touchstone for the lack of real substance in his wife. She shows distaste for George Sand, but has a secret liking for the trivial novels of Paul de Kock [7, 264]. In the Epilogue, when once more she is installed in Paris, her sentimentally erotic ideal is realised in the plays of Dumas Fils (especially La Dame aux Camélias) [7, 288].
Imagery and symbolism, which so permeate the fabric of the novel itself, have been a shaping element in Lavretsky’s own development. As a child he had been fascinated by the strange book Symbols and Emblems of Maksimovich-Ambodik, which presented apophthegms and moral precepts in emblematic form. This was virtually the only book available to him during his earlier formative years, and its linking of precept to stylised image had been reinforced by the regime later introduced by his father, which, ‘in order to sustain feelings of chivalry’, had compelled him to study heraldry.
Symbols and Emblems is associated in his childhood with the boredom of rural Russian life. Yet even the depiction of this boredom is poeticised and appears to take on other literary echoes:
This scene of the child with his Emblems, and the three old ladies compared to the fates, has its own emblematic quality. Yet there is also a literary echo. Pushkin’s ‘Verses, Composed at Night, During Insomnia’ has many of the elements of this ‘emblem’: the ticking clock, the fates (Parcae), the allusion to the mouse. Indeed, the ending of the poem: ‘I want to understand you,/ I search for sense in you.’ suggests that the picture of life evoked has the same enigmatic quality as an emblem.11 In a real sense this childhood scene is also a riddle for Lavretsky: it is his fate to make sense of the emblematic life of the ancestral nest, both in its narrower, and in its wider context.
The answer to the riddle of Russian life is given him at Vasilevskoe through his contemplation of the nobleman’s garden. It is here, too, that he again comes across Symbols and Emblems and his former memories are stirred. The only emblems from this mysterious book which are directly presented to the reader merely seem to sustain its mystery. Yet the messages are consonant with those drawn by Lavretsky from nature: ‘Little by little’; ‘All of them are all known to you’; and, most enigmatic of all, the emblem of saffron and the rainbow, with its precept: ‘the action of the former is greater’.
‘Little by little’ reflects the lesson Lavretsky is to learn in his garden, and the fact that it depicts a bear licking its cub into shape reminds us that, in Western Europe at least, the Russian himself was identified with a bear. In the context of coming to terms with the facts of Russian life, the message: ‘all of them are known to you’, suggests that Lavretsky need look no further, and the enigmatic ‘Saffron and the Rainbow’ reinforces this idea: the gold’ of a herb reputed to produce happy feelings is more real than the mythical gold at the end of a rainbow.
These pictures, however, hold more general significance for Lavretsky; for we are told: ‘Cupid with his naked, chubby body played a great role in these drawings’ [7,161]. Thus the quest for meaning is associated with love. Lavretsky’s search is linked to two women - Varvara with her trivial Western values, and the serious Russian values embodied in Liza. As a child, Lavretsky did not love any of those who surrounded him, and the emblematic scene of his reading Symbols and Emblems concludes with an apophthegm worthy of the book itself: ‘Woe on the heart, that has not loved when young’ (Gore serdtsu, ne liubivshemu smolodu) - a prophecy, perhaps, of the failure that awaits him as an adult.
Such mottoes are used elsewhere in the novel as a key to character and behaviour. Thus Lavretsky’s wilful and despotic great grandfather had been given an amulet by a monk from Mount Athos with the words: ‘Wear it and fear no judgement’ (Nosi - i suda ne boisia) [7, 192], and Lavretsky’s own father adds the Latin motto: ‘In recto virtus’ (‘virtue in rectitude’) to the family crest [7, 160].
The occasion of Lavretsky's first meeting with Liza also has its emblem – in the cantata dedicated to her by Lemm (für sie allein). Its emblematic nature is to be seen visually in the way her name on the title page is surrounded by luminous rays, as is also its apophthegmatic title: ‘Only the Righteous are Right’. This dedication obviously says much about the piety and rectitude of Liza herself, and in musical terms the cantata opposes two contrasting choirs: the ‘happy ones’ and the ‘unhappy ones’ creating a tension which can only be resolved in religious terms, when they finally unite to sing: ‘O gracious God, have mercy on us sinners, and free us from all guileful thoughts and earthly hopes’ [7, 140]. Thus Lemm’s cantata prefigures Liza’s own struggle for happiness and spiritual development with its religious outcome rejecting ‘earthly hopes’, resolved in the light of ‘Only the Righteous are Right’. Indeed, Liza herself will later tell Lavretsky: ‘Now you yourself see, Fedor Ivanych, that happiness depends not on us, but on God’ [7, 273].12
Mikhalevich enters the novel as a voice of idealism from Lavretsky’s past. To a Lavretsky licking his wounds and seeking consolation in the slow flow of the Russian countryside, his is the voice of conscience - a voice calling for action. It is he who sheds light on the emblematic phrase: ‘Woe on the heart that has not loved when young’:
Women and action (delo) seem intimately connected in Lavretsky’s life. During the period of his ‘Westernism’, into which he was lured by the deceitful Varvara, he is aware of the need for delo - for meaningful action at home:
When he does return to Russia, after having his eyes opened to the falseness of his first love, the pace of Russian life itself, as we have seen, seems to suggest a slow approach to the question of action. It is this which Mikhalevich challenges, arguing that the Russian intelligentsia, like Lavretsky himself, may have seen through their first love (Westernism), yet seem able to content themselves with a false sense of knowledge derived from the experience:
In words which appear to echo Goncharov's depiction of Oblomov (the novel was published in the same year as Nest of Gentlefolk) Mikhalevich asserts:
Significantly Mikhalevich links action to love and Lavretsky’s need for an ideal woman: ‘But I can see that you need now some pure creature not of this earth, that would wrench you from your apathy’ [7, 206]. Although Lavretsky retorts that he has had enough of such ‘creatures not of this earth’, he will later see in Liza an ideal, that not only will save him, but will inspire him to work. So he muses: ‘But Liza is not the same as her; she would not demand shameful sacrifices from me; she would not distract me from my studies; she herself would inspire me to stern, honest labour, and both of us would move ahead towards a splendid goal’ [7, 226].
What is the work to which Lavretsky must dedicate himself? When he asks what Mikhalevich has in mind for him, he receives the reply: ‘That I won’t tell you my friend; everyone ought to know that...You’re a landowner, a nobleman, and you don’t know what to do!. You have no faith, otherwise you would know; without faith there’s no revelation’ [7, 204]. Thus the exhortation to work (delo) in the novel has something of the not fully stated, enigmatic quality of the precepts contained in Symbols and Emblems, and this has much to do with the political climate of the time, when any call to action, particularly one involving the loaded word delo could be misinterpreted by the authorities.13 Nevertheless it is the sort of work which must be undertaken by a landowner and a nobleman, and will be revealed to him by faith. In the context of pre-reform Russia the nobleman’s moral duty must be to improve the lot of his peasants, and he must have faith in the forthcoming plans for the emancipation of the serfs. Indeed, Mikhalevich reminds him that Lavretsky himself has peasant blood in his veins
Mikhalevich leaves him with a verbal device worthy of Symbols and Emblems itself: ‘Remember my last three words... Religion, Progress, Humanity’ [7, 206]. The formula is a reformulation of the well-known trinity of values which were supposed to guide the regime of Nicholas I: ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality’.14 For the narrower concept of Orthodoxy Mikhalevich has substituted religion itself; for autocracy - progress, and for the limiting idea of nationality - the much wider concept of humanity. He leaves Lavretsky musing on their earlier argument, but having taken to heart much that Mikhalevich had said: ‘Many of Mikhalevich’s words had entered his soul without resistance, although he had argued and not agreed with him’ [7, 206]. The chapter ends with an apophthegm also worthy of Symbols and Emblems: ‘If alone a man is good, no one can resist him’ [7, 206].
It is the moral qualities, the goodness, of Mikhalevich that makes his ideas difficult to resist, yet they seem almost cryptic. The least disclosed aspect is the role he sees for Lavretsky as landowner and nobleman, yet more clearly vouchsafed is the need for faith, and it is religion which occupies first place in Mikhalevich’s trinity of values. It is religion which also seems to find embodiment in Liza, and it is with religion that Lavretsky himself vainly tries to come to terms. Returning from the West, he seeks a Russian ideal, and actually appears to be toying with Slavophilism. Yet for a man with his education and background the Orthodox underpinning of Slavophilism, the religious nature of the Russian principle, is not easy to digest. The opening exchange at his second meeting with Liza nearly puts their relationship on the wrong foot:
He manages to redeem the situation by asking Liza to pray for him.
The question of religion again comes to the fore during the fishing sequence, and the awkwardness of their exchange (appropriate, perhaps, in this context) is full of points and barbs. Liza, whose religious convictions (inspired by the peasant nurse Agafia) prohibit her from judging others, thinks that judging is a fault in Lavretsky, but he defends himself. Because of his position, as a deceived husband, he asserts that he has no right to judge others, and he uses a phrase, which appears to echo his earlier dispute with Mikhalevich: ‘Or have you forgotten that only the lazy will not laugh at me’ [7, 210]. He attempts to change the conversation by asking Liza whether she has kept her promise. It is now her turn to be perplexed, but it turns out that the question is directed to his earlier request to pray for him. Liza asks him not to speak of such matters lightly and it now falls to him to cover his confusion by general assertions:
Liza appears to cut him short:
Thus her interruption brings the subject down to a personal level - the death of the individual. She confesses that she frequently thinks about death.
As Lavretsky is saying farewell to Liza he recalls her reproach about his attitude to religion: ‘Don’t speak about this lightly’, and at this point another quotation comes into his mind - a couplet from Mikhalevich’s poem:
Thus the exhortations of Mikhalevich seem to fuse with the reproaches of Liza, suggesting the possibility, not only of rejecting former ideals, but of accepting what had formerly been rejected: Lavretsky is wavering on the question of religion.
The newspaper report of his wife’s death again causes a moment of misunderstanding between Lavretsky and Liza. The latter, who has already indicated her refusal to judge, and her concern with death, sees the news as a punishment for Lavretsky’s earlier censure of his wife. Lavretsky sees it as freedom. Liza again rebukes him: ‘Stop it. Don’t talk like that. What is your freedom to you? You should not be thinking of that now, but about forgiveness...’ But the word ‘forgiveness’ itself is a further source of misunderstanding. Lavretsky protests that he has already forgiven his wife:
When the question of the possibility of Liza’s marriage to Panshin arises, Lavretsky begs her not to marry without love: it would be just the same as ‘unbelief’ (bezverie) [7, 221]. Then, aware of the presence of Lenochka and Shurochka, he breaks off - with the word ‘God’ on his lips: ‘But if your God...’ [7, 222]. When he next sees Liza, she seems more pensive, and her first thought seems to be to persuade him to go to Mass the following day, so that they may pray together for the peace of his wife’s soul [7, 226]. The next day, Sunday, Lavretsky attends the church, and finds Liza there already at prayer:
He had not been to church, or prayed to God, for a long time, and although now he utters no word of prayer even in silence, nevertheless, we are told that: ‘Perhaps for a moment, if not with his body, then with all his thought, he prostrated himself, and humbly pressed himself to the ground’ [7, 227]. He remembers how, as a child, he would always pray to the point where he felt someone was touching his forehead, and that this was his guardian angel receiving him and laying on him the seal of chosen status. Now it is as though, through touch, Liza will be his guardian angel: ‘He looked at Liza.. "You have brought me here", he thought, "Touch me. Touch my soul."’
Under the influence of her radiant image as she prays, he fulfils the request she had made: he asks for the peace of another’s soul and for forgiveness for his own. Outside the church that other system of ‘symbols and emblems’ -nature itself - seems to confirm the joy of his religious experience. He gives all the money he has with him to the beggars at the church door, and leaves.
When he next visits the Kalitins preparations for a special service in the house are under way: ‘Vespers had begun. Lavretsky squeezed into a corner; his feelings were strange, almost sad. He himself could not clearly make out, what he felt’ [7, 230]. After the service Liza seems cold, aloof and strangely exalted: ‘Lavretsky for some reason kept wanting to smile and say something amusing, but in his heart he felt confusion, and finally he went away secretly perplexed.. .he felt that there was something in Liza, which he could not penetrate’ [7, 230].
Although the ‘duel’ with Panshin brings Lavretsky and Liza together, there is still an important barrier: ‘...both of them understood that they had come close together during this evening, understood that they liked and disliked the same things. In one thing alone they differed; but Liza secretly hoped to bring him to God'’[7, 234). Perhaps, after all, her love for God is strongest of all: ‘Entirely filled with a sense of duty, a fear of offending anyone at all, with a heart that was kind and meek, she loved everybody, but no one in particular. It was only God that she loved rapturously, timidly, tenderly. Lavretsky was the first to disturb her quiet inner life..’ [7, 244].
The return of Lavretsky’s wife destroys all hope for Lavretsky of any further relationship with Liza, and with it of any further development of his religious sentiments. His last meeting with her (in the novel proper) is, fittingly enough, in church. The memory of that earlier occasion, when she had invited him to pray with her is in his mind, but now it is a monotonously sad bell that seems to summon him there in the hope of seeing Liza. All he sees are peasants devoutly at prayer. He questions one of them and learns that the obvious grief the peasant reveals in his devotion is because of the death of his son: ‘"What for them can replace the solace of the church?" thought Lavretsky and attempted to pray himself, but his heart had grown heavy and bitter, and his thoughts were far away’ [7, 281].
Liza has been hidden from his view in a corner of the church, but after the service he follows her out, and tells her that he has fulfilled the duty, she had exhorted him to carry out: he has made his peace with his wife. Religion which has always been a barrier between them has now ensured that this barrier is insuperable. Indeed, Liza had posed the fatal question much earlier: ‘How can one put asunder that which God has united?’ [7, 198]. Lavretsky has had to recognise this precept, and has done his duty. Liza, too, has her duty to fulfil: a duty enigmatically presented as a moral precept - to leave the world forever, and devote herself to the religious life of a nun: the contemplation of death, of which she had spoken earlier.
It is the strange vatic figure of Lemm who, like Liza’s grim guardian angel, provides the final comment on this relationship: ‘"What have I got to say?" Lemm countered gloomily, "I shall say nothing. Everything has died. and we have died (Alles ist todt, und wir sind todt)"’, and he then pointedly asserts that he and Lavretsky are going in different directions.
Lavretsky’s alienation from religion, in this final scene in the church, is also an alienation from the basic beliefs of the Russian common people (narod), as his comments on the religious devotion of the peasant who has lost his son make clear. By contrast, the roots of Liza’s own religious feelings are to be found here. Lavretsky had been brought up on Symbols and Emblems and, later, the Western values of his father. Liza was brought up by her peasant nurse Agafia on another system of stylised precepts: the lives of saints, anchorites and martyrs.15 Agafia, the former mistress of Liza’s maternal grandfather, is a peasant mother-figure for Liza who brings her into close contact with the religious sentiment of the Russian common people. Later when Marfa Timofeevna moves into the household: ‘Agafia begged leave to go on a pilgrimage and did not return. There were dark rumours that she had gone off into an old believers’ monastery. But the trace left by her in Liza’s soul was not destroyed’ [7, 243]. When Liza makes her decision to become a nun, Marfa Timofeevna is in no doubt who is responsible: ‘This is all Agafia’s legacy (sledy). It is she who has deprived you of sense’ [7, 286].
Liza’s formative years, with the French governess replacing the Russian nurse reads like a feminine echo of the educational experience of Pushkin’s hero Eugene Onegin.16 Indeed, Pushkin himself was greatly influenced by his own peasant nurse. If such contact with the peasantry was often typical of upbringing within the ‘noble nest’, there is yet another literary parallel, which the figure of Agafia suggests: she could well be seen as the female prototype of Makar Dolgoruky in Dostoevsky’s novel A Raw Youth. Like Makar, she is in oblique parental relationship to the central figure, and is a person of extreme devotion, who takes to a wandering life, and is drawn to the most extreme manifestations of the Russian religious experience. Makar has obvious emblematic status in Dostoevsky’s novel, which explores the development of a teenager pulled between competing loyalties to two ‘fathers’: Versilov, his natural father, exemplifies the values of the West; Makar, his mother’s legal husband, embodies the religious wisdom of the Russian common people. The national religious values of Agafia: her refusal to judge others and the quality of smirenie (humility in the face of everything) would be precisely those that Dostoevsky would later emphasise in his great novels. Turgenev, anticipating Dostoevsky, is exploring a similar theme, but in Nest of Gentlefolk the figure searching for identity between East and West is not a ‘raw youth’, but a mature nobleman undergoing an emotional crisis.
One might detect autobiographical elements in this search, but Lavretsky’s situation may have more general significance. Turgenev’s great contemporary, Alexander Herzen, had also undergone an emotional shock in the West on discovering the infidelity of his wife. It had coincided with soul-searching on an ideological level, which had changed Herzen from ardent Westerniser to something more akin to a Slavophile socialist. Turgenev had accused Herzen of bowing down to the peasant sheepskin coat, yet, for all his veneration of peasant values, Herzen could not accept religion. As the novel was maturing in Turgenev’s mind he was having lengthy discussions with Herzen in London, and some of Herzen’s predicament may well have gone into Turgenev’s artistic presentation of the problems of his own hero.
Under Liza’s influence Lavretsky grudgingly adopts a non-judgemental attitude to his wife, and almost against his will the experience of his first visit to the church induces in him a feeling of smirenie. At an ideological level these new influences surface in his argument with Panshin. He refutes the fashionable Westernisers’ idea of ‘leaps’ (skachki): the possibility that Russia could by-pass the earlier stages of Western European development and become a fully modern economy almost overnight. He rejects the feasibility of imposing bureaucratic solutions from above, not justified by a knowledge of Russia herself - the pursuing of half-baked ideals - and in evidence quotes his own education: ‘He demanded first of all the acknowledgement of the truth of the people, and humility (smirenie) before it, that humility, without which even boldness against falsehood was impossible’ [7, 232].
Yet if the concept of smirenie communicates a religious tinge to these arguments, it is only a tinge. Religion is still a stumbling block for Lavretsky, and nothing could illustrate the gap between Lavretsky and Liza on this issue more than their differing interpretations of ‘duty’. Mikhalevich had first stirred his conscience about duty, but the concept of duty he had put forward had a strong religious, as well as social, dimension: it was duty to God as well as to the people. The words of Mikhalevich have not been lost; later Lavretsky takes himself to task for his lack of action. He remembers the feelings he had experienced on his return to Vasilevskoe, and reproaches himself in words (‘the thirst for happiness’) that also seem to look back to the ‘emblem’ of Lemm's cantata:
When Liza tells him that both of them must fulfil their duty after the return of Varvara Pavlovna, it is clear that the duty she has in mind is not social but religious (‘How can one put asunder that which God has united?’). ‘"All right", said Lavretsky through clenched teeth, "Let us suppose I do this, and by this I fulfil my duty. But, you, what does your duty consist of?"’ [7, 273]. Liza refuses to answer, but her actions reveal that her sense of duty is even more restrictively centred in religion - it is her duty to become a nun: ‘Happiness depends not on us but on God’[7, 273].
The Epilogue assures us that Lavretsky ‘...had in reality ceased to think about his own happiness, and self-interested aims’ [7, 293]. Yet he should at least feel contented: ‘He had in reality become a good master, had really learned how to plough the land, and he laboured not just for himself alone; as far as he could, he had given strength and security to the daily life of his peasants’ [7, 293]. Thus it seems that ‘as far as he could’ he has fulfilled what he earlier saw as his duty. Nevertheless, there is still a sense of failure; for his valediction will be: ‘Welcome, lonely old age! Burn to the end useless life!’ His real hopes seem to be placed in the younger generation. They have a future, while for him there only remains death, yet even here religion still seems a possibility; for it is death in the form of a ‘waiting God’ [7, 293].
Notes
1. Thus Freeborn sees the novel ‘as though it were Turgenev’s post-mortem on the destiny of his generation. Their Western inheritance and their disillusionment in the circumstances of Nicholas I’s Russia were too crippling a burden, symbolized in the novel by the return of Varvara Pavlovna, to permit them to enjoy their new-found sense of purpose’ (Freeborn, Turgenev, p.88). Liza, he sees as ‘a symbol of Russia’ for Lavretsky ‘to which he has returned for succour and rededication after the wilderness of his earlier years’ ibid. p.113.
.2 Nevertheless, Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii considers that the ‘digression on Liza’ plays a structural role in the novel. See: D.N. Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii, Sobranie sochinenii, Vol. 2, ‘Turgenev’, 5th edition, Moscow/Petrograd, 1923, p.184. Yet, apparently, Turgenev had to be persuaded by friends to include the details of Liza’s childhood. See: Seeley, p.191.
3. In Pushkin’s poem The Gipsies (Tsygany) the love of the hero, Aleko, is betrayed by the gipsy girl, Zemfira.
4. Chekhov uses the motif of ‘fishing’ with different symbolic overtones in his play The Seagull. See: R. Peace, Chekhov: A Study of the Four Major Plays, New Haven and London, 1983, pp. 36-7.
5. Freeborn sees both Natalia (in Rudin) and Liza, in this novel, attracted to the older heroes as father-figures, and comments: ‘it is not difficult to recognise in this a Freudian off-shoot of Turgenev’s unhappy, complex and neurotic nature’ (Freeborn, Turgenev, p.112).
6. Chekhov may well have been influenced by this scene for a crucial meeting in his short story ‘The House with the Mezzonine’ (Dom s mezoninom). See: R. Peace, ‘"Dom s mezoninom" – A Study in Inauthenticity’, Anton P. Cechov – philosophische und religiöse Dimensionen im Leben und im Werk. (Vorträge des zweiten internationalen Cechov-Symposiums, Badenweiler, 20.-24. Oktober 1994), eds. V.B. Kataev, R-D. Kluge, R. Nohejl, Munich, 1997, p.564.
7. In the years 1856-7 Turgenev’s letters to his friends from abroad are full of references to being old. [L.3, 54, 65, 67, 92, 103, 105, 108-9, 116, 163, 173]. Although during this period he was suffering from particularly bad health, there also appear to have been difficulties in his relationship with Pauline Viardot. To L.N. Tolstoy , to Tolstoy’s sister and to Countess Lambert, he confesses the need for a ‘nest’ [L.3, 54, 65, 163]. He looks forward to returning to Russia, and tells Countess Lambert that he will become a ‘landowner’ (zemlevladelets) but not in the old sense of pomeshchik or barin [L.3, 164]. Later he tells her that he will return to Russia ‘very much shaken and defeated’, feeling that he has been punished for going abroad [L.3, 179]. At an age similar to that of his hero Lavretsky, Turgenev was undergoing a crisis in his life, and, after wandering in Europe, appeared to look to Russia for some sort of salvation.
8. The Oxford Russian Dictionary defines lavra as ‘monastery (of highest rank)’.
9. Such echoes in the novel seem to be reinforced by the mystic number eight. Thus Lavretsky was eight years old when his mother died, and on introducing himself to Liza, he tells her that it was eight years ago that he had last seen her. In the Epilogue he returns, as a similar stranger, to Liza’s house eight years after the main events of the novel have taken place.
10. According to Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii: ‘Only the inspired music of Lemm can provide an image of this secret [i.e.what is taking place in Liza’s soul]’. Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii, p.182 (see also p.174).
11. ‘Ia poniat’ tebia khochu,/ Smysla ia v tebe ishchu…’ The poem Stikhi sochinennye noch’iu vo vremia bessonnitsy dates from 1830. See: A.S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh (4th edition), Leningrad 1977-79, Vol. 3, p.186 (see also note on p.456).
12. Even the elevated language of the resolved choral tension has its own peculiar resonance for their relationship; for otzheni - 'free [us]’ suggests to a modern ear ‘un-wife’, ‘divorce’: ‘Un-wife (divorce) from us all guileful thoughts and earthly hopes’.
13. The word delo was often used as a euphemism for revolutionary activity, taking on the meaning of ‘the cause’.
14. In Virgin Soil the liberal-reactionary, Sipiagin, will put forward a different trinity of values: ‘Religion, Agriculture and Industry’ [12, 180].
15. There are parallels suggesting a common emblematic mode of thought. One may compare Liza’s zheltofioly (‘wallflowers’) from the blood of martyrs, and Lavretsky’s fialka (‘violet’) in a heron’s beak [7, 161, 242].
16. There is even a linguistic echo of Pushkin’s novel in the formulation : ‘Goda tri s nebol’shim khodila Agaf’ia za Lizoi; devitsa Moró ee smenila’ [7, 243] ( ‘For just over a year Agaf’ia looked after Liza; she was replaced by Miss Moreau’). Cf. Evgenii Onegin, Chapter 1, verse 3: ‘Sperva Madame za nim khodila,/ Potom Monsieur ee smenil’ (‘At first Madame looked after him,/ Then Monsieur replaced her’).