From the view point of the novel’s hero, Insarov, Turgenev’s title might suggest that the action is set on the eve of a Bulgarian uprising against the Turks, yet in the Russian perspective it could also suggest the eve of the Crimean War – the eve of great changes in Russia: the period of the great reforms. Turgenev himself makes plain that these, too, were implicit in his title, which he himself directly linked to the date of its publication. Thus he later wrote to Ludwig Friedländer:
The novel marks a further stage in the search for a positive hero. Up to this point the heroes of Turgenev’s fiction could all be said to be variants of the ‘superfluous man’ – a term which he himself might be considered to have invented, but which was used, and adapted by later critics to refer to the ineffectual male figures, that had dominated Russian literature in the first half of the nineteenth century. The concept was a wide one; it included, not only Turgenev’s own heroes, but Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Lermontov’s Pechorin, and Goncharov’s Oblomov. Despite many dissimilarities in these characters, critics stressed common factors, such as their love of words and lack of action; their inability to accept responsibility and commitment – underlined emblematically in their relationships with women, and their own general sense of the futility of their lives.
The need for a positive hero was sensed by many writers. Yet, as Dobroliubov pointed out in his influential essay, ‘What is Oblomovism?’, literature must not run ahead of life. As no such figures existed in Russian life, the search for the positive hero turned to foreign ‘erratics’. Gogol had been greatly taxed by the need to portray the positive hero, but could only come up with a man of mixed blood, Kostanzhoglo. Goncharov attempted a similar feat in the portrayal of his hero, Shtol’ts, in whom the practicality of the German was tempered by the sensitivity of a Russian mother.1 Both these figures were projected as men of business, and could be seen as an attempt to fill out another lacuna in Russian life: the lack of that entrepreneurial middle class, which so dominated the life of Western Europe.
Although in On the Eve Turgenev provides a hint of a Russian ‘man of affairs’ in Kurnatovsky, he is merely a foil, whose un-idealistic practicality sets off the high-minded self-abnegation of Insarov himself. What is more significant is that Turgenev refocusses the problem in political terms, and, moreover, that in his first attempt at a positive hero he opts, not for a man of mixed blood, but for an out and out foreigner – the Bulgarian freedom fighter, Insarov. His second, and more convincing attempt, would be based on the outsider within Russian society itself – The déclassé Bazarov.
Gogol’s ‘positive hero’, Kostonzhoglo, a man also of non-Russian, ‘southern blood’, showed his superiority over his Russian neighbours by his thrift, the frugality of his way of life and the narrow focus on only that which he considered essential. These are also characteristics which mark out another foreigner, influential in Russian literature: Pushkin’s hero, Herman, in The Queen of Spades, whose formula for life (before he entertained ideas of easy wealth) concentrated on absolute essentials: ‘I am not in a position to sacrifice what is necessary in the hope of gaining what is superfluous’ – a sentiment which the more expansive Tomsky ascribes to Herman’s national origins: ‘Herman is a German; he is thrifty, that’s all there is to it’.2 Disparagement of excess and concentration on essentials are perhaps not salient features of the broad Russian character (certainly, as portrayed by Dostoevsky) but they are distinguishing characteristics of the ‘foreign’ positive hero, be it Kostonzhoglo, Shtol’ts, or Insarov . They are present, too, in Bazarov and would later be strongly emphasised in Chernyshevsky’s polemical reply to Bazarov – his home-grown positive hero, Rakhmetov, in the novel What is to be done?.3
In his reduction of life to its bare essentials and his unswerving devotion to a cause, Insarov is an obvious forerunner of Rakhmetov – both are revolutionaries. At the same time it is often argued that the only way open to Turgenev to depict such a figure in the Russia of his time was to make him a foreigner fighting for a cause, with which the Russian government itself had professed sympathy. Nevertheless, On the Eve lay open to the charge of political ambiguity – a fact seized on by Dobroliubov in his review of the novel, which posed a question in its very title: ‘When Then Will The Real Day Come?’ (Kogda zhe pridet nastoiashchii den’) and began by stating: ‘For us, what the author wanted to say is not as important as what has been said by him’.4 Indeed, although Insarov is ostensibly fighting the Turks, refocussing the novel within a Russian context could also suggest the real struggle to lie with the ‘internal Turks’,5 and it is certainly true that the novel implies the overthrow of despotism in a wider sense than that of the ‘Turkish question’. Turgenev’s plot never allows Insarov to encounter the real Turks, but in Venice both he and Elena are confronted by evidence of Austrian suppression of the Italians: the arrogant officer who nearly gallops into them on the Lido [8, 150]; and the presence of Austrian cannon in the Doges’ Palace [8, 155-6]. Although the former makes Insarov’s blood boil, and the latter causes him to cram his hat more firmly on his head, the reaction of minor characters is more explicit. The Bulgarian patriot, Rendich, hates the Austrians, just as much as he despises the Turks [8, 163] and the Russian, Lupoiarov, complains that the accursed Austrians are everywhere in Venice [8, 158] and everywhere there are spies [8, 159]. Moreover, the figure of Elena, a foreigner abandoning all to support the political cause of her husband, may have been partly inspired by Anita Ribeira, the Brazilian wife of Garibaldi.6 The Italian cause, with its resonances of 1848 and European-wide revolution, was certainly in Turgenev’s mind at the time of writing his novel, as may be inferred from a letter to Baroness Lambert of June 1859:
It is, perhaps, for this reason that Italy figures in the novel. Goncharov asked the simple question: why did Insarov have to go to Venice to enter Bulgaria – Odessa would have been nearer? [8, 501]. There is, however, a certain irony in this question, since Goncharov, who thought that both A Nest of Gentlefolk and On the Eve had been plagiarised from his own work, must also have been aware that, in fact, Turgenev had used the manuscript of a friend and neighbour, V. Karataev, as his basis for his novel. Turgenev had been so impressed with Karataev’s account of his own love for Larisa, which had been frustrated when she went off with the Bulgarian patriot, Katranov, that he would read out extracts of Karataev’s manuscripts to friends. The real-life Katranov died in Venice in 1853 [8, 513], so here (irrespective of its political overtones) was ample justification for the Italian theme and for Turgenev’s choice of Venice, rather than Odessa. In fact as the author himself points out other routes to Bulgaria were closed [8, 149].
Yet, for all that he had chosen a non-Russian positive hero, Turgenev does not allow us to see him in action. A similar fate overtakes Insarov as the later hero, Bazarov: both are cut off in their prime by a fatal illness. The most we see of Insarov, as the man of action, is the way he deals with an insolent group of drunken Germans on an outing to Tsaritsyno – an incident and a venue which derive directly from Karataev’s manuscript. Turgenev himself commented: ‘Only one scene was sketched in fairly lively manner, the excursion to Tsaritsyno, and I preserved its main features in my novel’ [8, 497].
It is Elena who emerges as the strong personality and, therefore, seems once again to confirm the critical cliché of the superiority of the Russian heroine to her male counterparts. The figure of Elena, it appears, had haunted Turgenev even when he was writing Rudin. He records:
It was apparently Karataev’s manuscript which solved the problem.7
The portrait of Insarov is of a man of strong will:
It is because of this that Insarov does not make promises lightly, as Elena finds out, when, in chapter 17, she thinks that she has his agreement to a rendezvous on the following morning [8, 87]. When she does meet him, it is by chance, and he bluntly disabuses her of his intentions: ‘Yesterday, remember, Elena Nikolaevna, I did not promise anything’ [8, 92]. On the other hand, Elena knows that he can be entirely relied on, and that he never lies, as she confides to her diary: ‘Here at last, is a truthful man; here is someone to be relied on. He will never lie; he is the first man I have met, who does not lie’ [8, 81].
Insarov is a man of action, as his behaviour with the German louts at Tsaritsyno makes plain. The ‘bull-like neck, and enflamed bull-like eyes’ of the German , whom Insarov throws into the lake [8, 74] seem strangely to echo Shubin’s earlier disparaging remarks on Insarov as ‘hero’ (‘a hero bellows like a bull, but he moves a horn and walls fall down’) [8, 61]: Insarov, the true ‘bull’, it seems, is attacking a drunken parody of a hero in this bull-like German. Later Shubin will model a satirical effigy of Insarov depicting him as a ram with horns poised to strike [8, 99].8 Elena is impressed by the fact that Insarov has been condemned to death, but has managed to escape; also by the fact that he has been wounded. His strength of character inspires awe, even fear. She dreams of him with a dagger in his hand, threatening to kill both her and himself [8, 80], and she feels that there is something terrifying in his glance: ‘No, one cannot joke with him, and he knows how to stand up for people. But why this anger, these trembling lips, this poison in his eyes? Perhaps, it is not possible to be otherwise? Is it impossible to be a man, a fighter, and remain gentle and soft?’ [8, 83].
Shubin gives a less flattering account of Insarov’s qualities:
In his narrowness of purpose, his asceticism, his rejection of art and aesthetic considerations, Insarov, as we have seen, seems to anticipate the ‘nihilistic’ hero of the 1860s, and Turgenev even toys with the idea of arousing his interest in Feuerbach – one of the chief philosophical ‘authorities’ for the men of the 60s. Thus, we learn that: ‘Bersenev called in on him and talked to him about Feuerbach. Insarov listened to him attentively, objecting seldom, but to the point; from his objections it was obvious that he was attempting to weigh up himself, whether he needed to study Feuerbach, or whether he could do without him’ [8, 55].
Nevertheless, for all Turgenev’s projection of him as a positive man of the will, and even, in the eyes of Elena, a romantic ‘strong man’, there is a weaker side to Insarov’s character, as some of Shubin’s strictures suggest. The awe he inspires in Elena is strangely undermined, by another comparison that comes to her mind: ‘Talking to him, I suddenly recalled our butler Vasilii, who dragged a poor old man out of a burning hut, and nearly perished himself. My papa called him a brave lad, mummy gave him five roubles, and I wanted to bow down before him. He too had a simple, even, one might say, stupid, face. Later he turned into a drunkard’ [8, 80].9 These last statements are hardly flattering, if they form part of a comparison with Insarov: they seem to suggest that heroes can be made of unthinking stuff. Indeed, the strong will of Insarov, which so impresses those around him, turns out, in effect, to be an abdication of will. Such is the conclusion that Elena commits to the intimate pages of her diary: ‘It seems to me that D. (I am going to call him D. I like his name Dimitrii) is so clear in mind and spirit [tak iasno na dushe], because he has entirely surrendered himself to his cause, to his dream. What is there to disturb him? He who has surrendered himself entirely, entirely, entirely, has little grief, he is not responsible for anything. It is not I who wish, it is it, that wishes’ [8, 83].
If Insarov is to be judged by the criteria of the ‘superfluous man’, and by Chernyshevsky’s article, ‘The Russian man at the Rendez-vous’,10 then the touchstone of ‘love’ reveals him in a far from positive light. It is Elena who has to make the declaration of love to him [8, 93], and the access of emotion, which undermines the fixed purpose of the hero’s will, reveals a surprising weakness – he cries, whereas the heroine remains dry-eyed:
Moreover, before this, like the typical ‘superfluous man’, he had attempted to run away from love, and when Elena reminds him of this: ‘Ah! Didn’t you want to run away from me? You, a Bulgarian, did not want a Russian love! Let’s see now how you will get rid of me!’, he admits the fact, but pleads a reason: ‘Elena, you know what forced me to go away’. To which she replies: ‘I know: you fell in love and got scared, but you must surely have suspected that you were loved in return?’ [8, 113].
It seems that, for all that Insarov is presented as a new type of hero, an un-Russian hero, there is still something very ‘Russian’ about him. Looking at Turgenev’s work as a whole, one is struck by the way, in which Insarov fits into the pattern of development of the typical Turgenevan hero. There is, as we have seen, much which links him with the ‘superfluous man’, so typical of the writing that has gone before. At the same time there is also much that looks forward to Turgenev’s treatment of the positive man of action, as exemplified by Bazarov. Yet, as with Bazarov, Turgenev seems unable to present this figure in action, and achieving his goals: indeed, like Bazarov, Turgenev condemns him to an early death. What is perhaps striking about the figure of Insarov is not so much that he is a foreign hero, as that he is a transitional one in the development of Turgenev’s writing.
Turgenev introduces his heroine as a tall girl, with a face that, curiously, is both pale and swarthy: (‘litso imela blednoe i smugloe’) Her straight features (nose and forehead) seem to suggest directness, and her tight mouth and fairly sharp chin hint at a degree of obstinacy. She is above all serious, even tense:
Dobroliubov shrewdly observes that Elena’s character has been formed by the circumstances of her family life, which often forced her to mediate between a wayward philandering father and a weak, vulnerable mother: ‘The less she could act practically in these circumstances, the more work was afforded to her mind and imagination. She began to be on the same level as her elders, and was subordinating them to herself’.11
Nevertheless despite her propensity for reflection and thought, she thirsts for activity. Her governess had aroused in her an interest in reading and literature: ‘but reading alone did not satisfy her; from childhood she had thirsted for activity, for good works’ [8, 33]. At this earlier stage in her life this thirst for ‘good works’ [deiatel’noe dobro] takes the form of a compassionate interest in beggars, the starving, the ill, and animals. At the same time she feels that she is cold towards her own family, and that there is justice in her father’s reproach that it is only dogs and cats that she loves [8, 80]. Her father, perhaps unconsciously prescient, calls her a ‘republican’, and - when she comes home spattered in mud - a ‘peasant’. This latter description seems to provoke a strong reaction: ‘She flushed up entirely, and there was a terrible and strange feeling in her heart’ [8, 343]. To the pages of her diary she confides her despairing sense of frustration with the life she is leading: ‘Neither my worthless alms, nor my activities, nothing, nothing can help me. If I were to go off somewhere and be a servant, in truth, I should feel easier’ [8, 81].
Insarov says that he values her opinion ‘because she is a good young lady and not an aristocrat’ [8, 66], and indeed, there is a directness, a hint of the common touch, which is often far from ‘lady-like’, exemplified, perhaps, in her singing of the coarse soldier’s song, which so shocks her mother [8, 34], and the unlady-like gesture, she makes with thumb and nose, to express her reaction to a proposal of marriage from Kurnatovsky [8, 114]. Her self-identification with the underprivileged is brought out in her relationship at the age of nine with the beggar girl, Katia, but it also reveals a quality, the very opposite of that free, rebellious spirit, we associate with her – the quality of humility (smirenie). We see her trying to share the experiences of Katia’s life: ‘With a feeling of joyful humility [smirenie] she ate her stale bread and listened to her tales’ [8, 33]. It would appear that, as a young girl, she is already seeking to humble herself before the common people, and share their food, as well as their oral culture. But the word smirenie also has a religious sense, and a phrase repeated by Katia imprints itself on her consciousness. Katia talks of leaving her cruel aunt to live na vsei bozh’ei vole –‘in complete freedom’ (or more literally: ‘entirely according to the will of God’) – a phrase italicised in the text:
The values of the dispossessed narod are endowed with an almost holy aura. Elena goes home to reflect on beggars and God’s will and freedom (bozh’ia volia), dreaming of joining the free wandering life of a beggar along with Katia.
It is significant that the phrase ‘na vsei bozh’ei vole’ should so impress Elena – it is full of presentiment for her own future life. Yet, there is an inherent ambiguity: volia is both ‘freedom’ and ‘will’ – on the one hand, the phrase offers the wandering liberation of ‘God’s freedom’ – on the other, it suggests subservience to ‘God’s will’.12 Shortly afterwards Katia dies and her last words ring in Elena’s ears: they seem to be calling her [8, 34]. Her flight from her family for the wandering life with Insarov is her version of Katia’s desire to live ‘na vsei bozh’ei vole’. Yet what seems to her father to be the rebellious freedom of a young girl to come and go as she pleases [8, 133], is, in fact, subservience to a higher principle. In falling in love with Insarov she breaks the chain that binds her to her family, symbolically suggested in the love scene between them in chapter 23, as she takes her leave of her lover: ‘"Good bye. Let me go". He embraced her for a last time. "Oh! Look, you have broken my chain"’ [8, 114]. Nevertheless, love for Insarov will bind her in stronger chains.
The unresolved tension between freedom and the ‘chains’ imposed by a higher moral imperative is made explicit in a later exchange between the lovers:
The fact that for Elena love is seen as sacrifice to a higher cause is patent in Turgenev’s plan for the novel: ‘She wants to love, not for pleasure, but to surrender herself’ [8, 409].
It is in keeping with Elena’s character that she should be impressed by the phrase ‘na vsei bozh’ei vole’ with all its religious significance. Like Liza in A Nest of Gentlefolk, Elena has a deep religious sense. In her diary she writes of praying for love [8, 80], and of praying to God to overcome the strange impulses which inexplicably affect her [8, 80-81]. On hearing that Insarov has passed the crisis in his first illness, her immediate reaction is to fall on her knees and thank God [8, 124].
The love which she cannot feel for her family she lavishes on animals and beggars. Like Tatiana, in Eugene Onegin of whom Pushkin said: ‘Her soul was waiting –for some-one or other’, Elena, too, is ‘waiting.’13 Shubin makes the point, in his typically joking manner, when he directs Bersenev to the garden to find her: ‘I think she is waiting for you…She is waiting for someone, at least. You understand the force of these words: she is waiting!’ [8, 48].
The person she is ‘waiting’ for is not Bersenev (and certainly not a ‘superfluous man’ like Eugene Onegin): it is, of course, Insarov. In a gesture, not unlike that of Lezhnev in Rudin, who had embraced a lime tree, Elena, in the privacy of her bedroom, when nature, like herself, is awake, expresses her need for love by embracing the empty air: ‘The first fiery rays of the sun penetrated her room… "Oh, if he loves me!", she suddenly exclaimed, and not feeling ashamed of the sun’s rays, she opened wide her arms in an embrace’ [8, 88].
In many ways Elena and Insarov seem, admirably suited. Both, as practical people, are at one in their lack of aesthetic appreciation. Elena comments on this in her diary: ‘It is true, our tastes are similar. Neither of us likes poetry; neither of us can make sense of art’ [8, 82]. Their philistine attitude to art is later borne out in the mirth provoked by the paintings they see in the academy delle Belle Arti in Venice [8, 152], and this lack of seriousness spills over to their visit to the opera and their initial reaction to Verdi’s La Traviatta (though this is a work which the author himself denigrates as ‘fairly banal’ [8, 153]). Yet there are pictures in the gallery which they like, and if the singing of the bass in the opera strikes them as comic, the acting of the singer playing Violetta makes a deep impression on them, particularly as the tragedy enacted on stage echoes their own personal situation.
The aesthetic criteria which guide both Insarov and Elena seem curiously close to those of the radical critic Chernyshevsky, as propounded in his notorious work The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality; for, although they reject the ‘falseness’ of art, they both appear to appreciate the beauty of the natural world. Flowers are important to them. Insarov identifies Elena with the smell of mignonette [8, 114; 123], and Elena confides to her diary: ‘By the way, he and I both love the same flowers. I picked a rose today. One of its petals fell, and he picked it up…I gave him the rose itself’ [8, 83]. If this is the language of flowers, it is revealing: it is by convention the man who offers a rose to his lady, but, then, as we have seen, it is she who will later make the declaration of love, after telling him: ‘It is as though you are afraid of me. But I am bolder than you’ [8, 93].
Bersenev, as a character, is closer to an earlier type of Turgenevan hero – the man of ideas rather than action. Shubin, in his ironic style, calls him: ‘a conscientiously restrained enthusiast, a true representative of those priests of science[…] of whom the class of middle-ranking Russian gentry is so justly proud’ [8, 28]. The ‘representational’ nature of Bersenev’s character can be seen in the way Turgenev suggests the progress of his intellectual development, which mirrors that of the Russian intelligentsia itself from the 1830s, through the 40s, and up to the eve of the 60s – a philosophical path which led from Schelling to Feuerbach..
Bersenev is imbued with the Schellingism of a previous generation through the influence of his father and one of his writings, which is described as a manuscript of a follower of Schelling, ‘who used expressions that were not always clear’[8, 23]. At the same time he follows more modish intellectual currents, and in the novel itself, as we see, attempts to interest Insarov in a philosopher who was rapidly becoming an ‘authority’ for the younger generation – Ludwig Feuerbach [8, 55]. Nevertheless his own intellectual centre of gravity is clearly focussed on the philosophical concerns of the 1840s, and in particular on that typical Westerner of the period, the historian Timofei Nikolaevich Granovsky. Bersenev had the choice of becoming either a philosopher or an historian, but he tells Elena:
Thus for all his interest in the more fashionable Feuerbach, Bersenev is guided by, and committed to the past. At the end of the novel we find him in Heidelberg, and the author of two articles in the Westernising mode of Granovsky: ‘On Certain Peculiarities of Ancient German Law in the Matter of Judicial Punishments’ and ‘On the Significance of the Civic Principle in the Question of Civilisation’, about which the author himself comments: ‘it was merely a pity that both articles were written in rather heavy language and were peppered with foreign words’ [8, 166]. We are told, somewhat ironically, that he will make a competent professor.
Given Elena’s serious attitude to life, it seems that she might be attracted to this philosopher/historian. Shubin tells his friend as much: ‘Then you turned up You are an idealist, you believe…what is it, if I can remember, that you believe? You talk about Schiller, about Schelling (and she is always looking for remarkable people) so it is you who have conquered…’ [8, 28]. Later to Insarov, Elena herself confirms this attraction: ‘…and as regards Andrei Petrovich – Oh! There was a moment when I thought, is it not he?’ [8, 130].
Yet in matters of love, Bersenev suffers from the weakness of earlier Turgenevan heroes: he is more interested in ideas than in decisive action. Turgenev’s scheme for the novel makes this clear: ‘B. remaining alone with E., instead of explaining his love, launches into philosophy’ [8, 408]. Moreover Bersenev’s ‘philosophical’ position on that much debated question of the role of the ego compounds his difficulties: ‘But I think that placing oneself as number two is the whole purpose of our life’ [8, 14]. Instead of pressing his own suit with Elena, he places himself in a secondary position, and extols the virtues of his friend Insarov:
Turgenev’s irony, here, is obvious: not only is Germanic scholarship a consolation for lack of self-promotion in love, it is Bersenev’s future carried on from ‘on the eve’.
Later he suggests that the reason for Insarov’s sudden decision to leave for Moscow is because of Elena, and realises from her tears that it is Insarov she loves. Once again he has played the role of ‘number two’ in love, though he questions his motives:
Once again his career as a scholar suggests itself as an excuse for not following his own direct interests: ‘"A future mediator between science and the Russian public" that is what Shubin calls me; it is obvious that I have been destined to be a mediator’ [8, 86-7].
When Insarov falls ill, it is Bersenev who nurses him back to life, but yet he knows that he must inform Elena of the seriousness of his friend’s condition:
It is not merely that Bersenev is a ‘third person’ between Elena and Insarov, his psychology is that of a natural mediator. Elena records that he had rebuked her for her coldness towards Shubin [8, 84]. It is no wonder that later she tells Insarov that she trusts Bersenev like a brother [8, 129]. At the end of the first chapter the author had suggested that there was something of the ‘gentleman’ about Bersenev [8, 15]. On his manuscript list of characters for the novel, Turgenev made a note linking Bersenev with Karateev, the author of the original manuscript, which had sparked off Turgenev’s own imagination. But in Bersenev there is also something of Turgenev himself - the ‘third person’ in the Viardot household. The words used by Bersenev to come to terms with his position (‘How can one wish to cling to the edge of another’s nest?’ – chto za okhota lepit’sia k kraeshku chuzhogo gnezda? [8, 126]), as commentators have pointed out, echo those of a letter written by Turgenev at this time.14 ‘Ultimately, Bersenev, the ‘gentleman’ and mediator, can only fall back on his academic work, consoling himself with his father’s words, that both he and his son are ‘labourers’ [8, 126].
Shubin is presented as a figure in contrast to Bersenev. The latter is a philosopher, whose artistic side is drawn to music. He has a grand piano in his room and (we are told) like all Russian noblemen [dvoriane], he studied music in his youth, but, also like them, plays badly:
It is plastic arts that really appeal to Shubin. He is a sculptor, who, nevertheless, has a sceptically philosophical turn of mind.
Bersenev is attracted to German culture. We learn of his upbringing on Schelling and Schiller and of his constant reading of the historian, Von Raumer. At the end of the novel he is in Heidelberg. By contrast, Shubin is identified as ‘French’. When Bersenev rebukes him in these terms: ‘What are you fidgeting about like that for, you Frenchman’, he replies: ‘Yes, I am French, half-French’ [8, 57]. At the end of the novel he is a successful sculptor living in Rome, but his works are, nevertheless, ascribed to the French School [8, 166-7]. As we have seen, both these aspects of the aesthetic approach to life, music and art, are foreign to Insarov and Elena. Indeed, Shubin thinks that it is because he is an artist that Elena refuses to take him seriously:
He senses a similar hostility in Insarov: ‘He finds me, as an artist, antipathetic, and I am proud of that’ [8, 60].
In his plan for the novel Turgenev makes the characterisation of Shubin plain: ‘The scepticism and tenderness of a poetic nature in Sh.’ [8, 407]. This ‘tenderness’ seems apparent in Shubin’s propensity for tears. Yet, at the same time, there is scepticism, even bitterness, which manifests itself in what he calls his ‘vengeance’ – the parody busts of Insarov, himself and Annushka [8, 99-100].
In his portraits of Bersenev and Shubin, Turgenev appears to be highlighting the ‘foreign’ nature of Russian intellectual life, influenced, as it was, both by German and French culture. Even men of action, it seems, must be sought elsewhere. Yet it is Shubin who asks the fundamental question about the state of Russian life and culture: ‘What do you think, Uvar Ivanovich,: when, then, will our time come? When will [real] people be born amongst us?’ [8, 142]. The novel itself leaves us with this same question. Shubin, writing from Italy (‘from my beautiful distance’), reminds Uvar Ivanovich of their earlier conversation, and the latter’s positive reply that there would be such people, but Shubin poses the question again: ‘Well, what do you think, Uvar Ivanovich, will there be [such people]?’ [8, 167]. As though in response, the novel ends with the fidgeting silence of the letter’s recipient.
The phrase ‘from my beautiful distance’ (iz moego prekrasnogo daleka) clearly links Shubin’s question to an earlier search for the ‘positive man’ in Russian literature. It is a quotation from the final chapter of Part I of Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, a writer also looking at Russia from the ‘beautiful distance’ of Italy, and hoping that in the following parts of his masterpiece he would be able to portray the good sides of Russia and the positive Russian man. Unfortunately, Gogol’s attempts to do so proved unconvincing: the silence of Uvar Ivanovich is highly significant.
The positive hero in Turgenev’s novel is, as we have seen, the non-Russian Insarov. He is ‘a man’. In his draft plan for the novel, Turgenev appears quite unambiguous. In the scheme for Chapter 2 he has Bersenev say: ‘I will show you a man’ [8, 409]. Nevertheless, in the novel itself during an earlier exchange between Shubin and Uvar Ivanovich, the sculptor had suggested Insarov as the treacherous hero, by wanting to model him as Brutus:
A Russian contender both for the hand of Elena and the role of ‘man’ may be seen in Kurnatovsky, but such pretensions are dismissed both by Elena herself and by Shubin. In fact, Kurnatovsky seems more drawn to the German qualities of Zoe (whom he will eventually marry), and she - captivated by purely external features - responds to him with a phrase, casting Russian ‘man’ in an ironical context: ‘Das ist ein Mann’ [8, 109]. Nevertheless, certain parallels between Kurnatovsky and Insarov are drawn by Elena herself. In a letter to Insarov she describes Kurnatovsky’s uncomprehending attitude to art, which seems fleetingly to remind her of views expressed by Insarov, but she quickly corrects herself, and when Kurnatovsky talks of himself as a ‘proletarian’ and of people like himself being ‘unskilled workers’ (chernorabochie), Elena thinks: ‘If Dimitri were to say this, it might please me, but let this one speak as he likes! Let him boast!’ [8, 107]. The would-be upright nature of Kurnatovsky is characterised by his cliché use of the word ‘rules’ (pravila). It is a way of showing his approval of people, but the inflexibility of his attitude is demonstrated, when he defends the punishment of the innocent, who may have fallen foul of such rules [8,108]. It is left to Shubin to point up the contrast between Insarov and Kurnatovsky:
In Venice Insarov and Elena are visited by another Russian, Lupoiarov, whose assertion: ‘We have philosophised enough. What is needed now is practical work, practical work’ [8, 160], is totally undermined by the incessant babbling of his own grasshopper mind. It leads Insarov to comment: ‘This is what your younger generation is like! Some of them give themselves airs and they pose, but at heart they are just the same empty vessels [svistun], as this gentleman’ [8, 168].
If the babbling enthusiams of Lupoiarov may be taken as symptomatic of the fecklessness of the younger generation of Russians, the cynicism and lax moral standards of the older generation is portrayed in Elena’s father, who in his youth was considered a philosopher, because he did not go on drinking sprees, knew French and was argumentative [8, 18]. In middle age he has the reputation of a frondeur, merely by virtue of the fact that his cliché reactions to the statements of others is taken as evidence of a challenging mind [8, 19]. He keeps a German mistress in Moscow, and lavishes presents on her, although, secretly, she thinks he is a fool. There is, moreover, a sly hint that he visits prostitutes.16 In spite of his own conduct, he becomes incensed at what he considers to be his daughter’s immoral behaviour.
The hypocrisy of Nikolai Artemevich’s indignation is aptly conveyed through the combination of faltering sentences, pomposity of tone, and resort to French. Moreover, his insistence on the ‘rules’ (pravila) of morality links him with the cliché values of Kurnatovsky, a point made earlier by Shubin, when Nikolai Artemevich had spoken of him as an ‘artist, a man without rules’ [8, 132].
Insarov is seen by Bersenev as exhibiting positive characteristics quite foreign to Russians. Even the author comments at the end of Chapter 7 that Insarov saw his friend to the door: ‘with a courteous politeness, scarcely common in Russia’ [8, 39], and Bersenev, in recommending his friend to Elena, says: ‘In truth, his sincerity is not our worthless sincerity, but the sincerity of people who have definitely nothing to hide’ [8, 52-3]. The fact that Insarov never changes his mind, and does not put off what he has promised to do, also strikes Bersenev as foreign: To Bersenev, as a fundamentally Russian man, such punctilliousness, even greater than that of the Germans, seemed at first a little queer, even a little comic; but he soon got use to it and ended by finding it, if not estimable, then at least highly convenient’ [8, 54].
The Russians, it seems, do not show up well against this Bulgarian, but there is at least one ‘Russian’ quality, that Insarov can admire in this friend who selflessly nursed him through his first illness, and yet, as Elena tells him, was actually his rival in love. This quality is the ‘Russian heart’. On learning this news, Insarov exclaims: ‘Oh, you Russians…You have hearts of gold!’ [8, 129] – in this it is as though he is endorsing, as something quintessentially Russian, Bersenev’s own ideas on ‘love as sacrifice’ and the acceptance of being ‘number two’.
The novel exposes the weaknesses of the Russian educated classes, and no one makes this plainer than Shubin:
Nevertheless, the Russian common people do not come out any better. The opening of Chapter 7 describes the difficulties Bersenev encounters in trying to find where Insarov is living in Moscow, and the author himself comments: ‘Janitors in St Petersburg try to avoid the eyes of visitors, and even more so in Moscow: no one responded to Bersenev’ [8, 36]. Even the tailor, with whom Insarov is actually living, is completely uncooperative, and responds in a rude and off-hand manner, when told of Insarov’s intentions to retain the room while he is away in Kuntsevo [8, 39].
When it comes to popular art, the poetic imagination of the Russian people, the fantastic creations of its folklore, receive short shrift from Shubin: ‘What is the value to me, a sculptor, of these offspring of cowed, cold fantasy, born in the stifling air of a peasant hut, in the darkness of winter nights? [8, 16].17 The Russians, he says, are no Greeks – they are ‘thick-skinned Scythians’. At Tsaritsyno neither he, nor the other Russians on the boat, are able to sustain their attempt to sing a Russian folk song [8, 72]. At the same time, in a clear reference to the Slavophiles, Shubin sees Insarov’s attitude to the culture of his native land as far more genuine than that of Russian intellectuals who claim to venerate the people: ‘He is linked with his land. It’s quite different from our empty vessels, who fawn upon the people: as if to say "Let living water be poured into us!"’ [8, 60].18
In view of such censure of the Russian character, it is significant that Shubin should ironically claim to see the philosophical embodiment of Russian values in the unworthy figure of Uvar Ivanovich, of whom the author himself had earlier said: ‘He did nothing and scarcely thought, but if he did think, then he kept his thoughts to himself’ [8, 40]. Shubin’s veneration of his apparent mentor is heavily ironic:
This sculptor, who delights in moulding physical parodies of others, does not, in fact, produce a parodistic statue of Uvar Ivanovich in this role. Nevertheless, throughout the course of the novel he continually slaps his satirical ‘clay’ around this hapless figure to build up a purely verbal parody of ‘the Russian’.
In Shubin’s statement that the recumbent position of Uvar Ivanovich could indicate either laziness or power, there is perhaps a suggestion that Turgenev is polemicising with Goncharov, whose novel Oblomov had been published the previous year.19 Oblomov is depicted as the ‘Russian’ caught between East and West, and there is a hint of this in the portrayal of Uvar Ivanovich. Only once in his life did he show emotion and activity: when he read in the papers about some new instrument exhibited at the Universal Exhibition in London, and he actually set about ordering it. The Great Exhibition in London is a much exploited topos in Russian literature of the period, symbolising, as it does, the progress and technical achievements of the West. But if this brief, but lively enthusiasm for things western suggests a minor flirtation with Westernism itself, the jocular remarks of Shubin contrive to present him as a representative of Slavophilism.20 Thus when he calls him ‘a representative of the choric principle’, he is referring to one of the basic tenets of Slavophile philosophy, and in addressing him as: ‘the black earth force’ and the ‘foundation of the social edifice’ [8, 44], he appears to identify Uvar Ivanovich with the peasantry itself. Indeed, Shubin’s feigned delight at his ‘oracle’s’ response to the question: whether Russia will ever produce real people, is the reaction of one who pretends to have received wisdom from the very soil: ‘There will be? Soil! Black-earth power! You have spoken. There will be? Look! I shall write down your words’ [8, 142].
When Shubin repeats his question, in his letter at the end of the novel, he addresses Uvar Ivanovich once more as ‘black-earth power’ [8, 167], but here the concluding words of the novel seem to look forward to Bazarov’s view that such autocthonic figures are as mysterious as ‘the stranger’ of Mrs Radcliffe’s gothic fiction: ‘Uvar Ivanovich played with his fingers and directed his enigmatic gaze into the distance’ [8, 169], and it is obvious that, since the writing of A Nest of Gentlefolk, Turgenev’s attitude towards his fellow countryman, on the evidence of this novel, has become far more pessimistic. There are notes here of a certain disillusionment that will resurface in Fathers and Children (where there will be another attempt to depict a positive hero). Nevertheless, the height of Turgenev’s own pessimism about Russia will be reached in his later work – in the novel Smoke.
* * * * * *
From the opening words of the novel: ‘In the shade of a tall lime tree’ the reader is immediately precipitated into the world of nature. It is here that the whole of the first section of the novel takes place – a ‘philosophical’ conversation between Bersenev and Shubin, such as we have come to expect from Turgenev’s intelligentsia heroes, which begins under the lime and only ends when Bersenev decides to leave its shade. In this opening scene nature not only presents a backdrop for debate, it inspires the protagonists with a central motif in their discussions.
Shubin, the young sculptor, seems argumentative, ironically addressing Bersenev as ‘philosopher’, and perhaps there is a sense in which his friend’s recent academic success provokes him into intellectual sparring. The first difference of views springs directly from their contrasting attitudes to nature, in which the positions they defend seem strangely at odds with the stereotype of their professional values, suggesting almost a mutual role reversal. Shubin, the artist, disparages the beauty of the natural scene, and stresses instead the philosophical theme of man’s place in nature. Bersenev, who as an academic historian, might be expected to approach nature from a similar standpoint, and be interested in man’s position in the scheme of things, is, in fact, only concerned with the beauty of the natural world he sees around him. There is in this discussion, which takes place ‘on the eve’, the glimmering of a theme that would later preoccupy the intelligentsia of the post-Crimean War period – the conflict between aesthetics and ethics. Moreover, the drift of Shubin’s observation that nature cuts man down to size implies a moral relativism and a line of thought that would later be identified as ‘nihilism’. Indeed, in his folksy turn of phrase, use of coarse expressions, and his relationship to Bersenev (that of cynic to romantic) there is much in the portrayal of Shubin which seems to prefigure Bazarov.
When Bersenev confesses that for all the pleasure he finds in the fullness of nature, it nevertheless evokes in him a feeling of sadness, a sense of something missing, Shubin, typically, has a deflating explanation: Bersenev is suffering from sexual frustration: ‘You have described the sensations of a lonely man, who does not live, but merely looks, and succumbs to feeling’ [8, 12]. What Bersenev needs, he says, is a female companion. ‘You see, this anxiety, this sadness, is only a kind of hunger. Give the stomach real food, and everything will immediately be put right’ [8, 12]. Nature, according to Shubin is cold, whereas love is warm (‘Love – what a powerful, ardent (goriachee) word! Nature - what a cold, schoolbook (shkol’noe) expression’ [8, 12]). Nature in Shubin’s view, it would appear, is ‘cold’ because it arouses passions which in itself it cannot satisfy. Thus he tells Bersenev:
The uncomfortable feeling which nature can inspire is not just the awareness of a yearning for love. There is a more fundamental sense of threat and negation felt by Bersenev. Thus he objects to his friend:
Shubin is quick to bring back the argument away from nature to love. But, although he counters: ‘In love too - there is life and death’, he sees it as a positive force: ‘The thirst for love is the thirst for happiness’ [8, 13], and in contrast to Bersenev, who senses an ominous note of sadness in nature, the natural world inspires Shubin with the anticipation of happiness: ‘My god – is a radiant and happy god’, he proclaims. This is, in fact, the opening line of a poem he had conceived, but could get no further than this first line [8, 14].
It is now Bersenev’s turn to question the concept of happiness – it might be a word which is too egoistic, too divisive, compared with words which link fellow human beings together, such as ‘native land’, ‘science’, ‘freedom’, ‘justice’. In this list of unifying concepts there is one obvious omission, and Shubin is quick to raise, what, after all, is his own favourite topic:
Shubin cannot understand such a concept, which he thinks of as good only for Germans. He wants love for himself – he wants to be number one. ‘"Number one", Bersenev repeated. "But I think that placing oneself as number two is the whole purpose of our life"’ [8, 14].
Here, the question of the nature of love is posed in romantic terms, but the underlying tension it suggests between egoism and altruism looks forward, once more, to ideas that would dominate the radical intelligentsia of the post-Crimean War period – the doctrine of Enlightened Self-Interest, based on the writings of the English Utilitarians – most notably the works of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
When Shubin objects that, if everybody tried to be ‘number two’, nobody in the world would eat pineapple, as everyone would offer it to everyone else, Bersenev replies: ‘Have no fear; there will always be those who relish (liubiteli) taking even the bread from the mouths of others’ [8, 15]. There then ensues a silence only broken by Bersenev himself, with an apparent change of topic, but in the context of their discussion on love it seems to assume prophetic significance: he tells his friend that he has met Insarov. In the further course of the novel it will be Insarov who takes the ‘bread’ (Elena) from the mouths of Bersenev and Shubin.
When Shubin tries to probe the feelings of his friend to find out whether his affections have been aroused by any particular woman, it is then that Bersenev terminates their ‘philosophical’ discussion by leaving the shade of the lime tree. Nevertheless, under its aegis their heated conversation about ‘nature’ has touched on the insignificance of man in the scheme of things, on death and on altruism, but it has always come back to the theme of love. Thus we can see that Turgenev has used this opening intellectual debate to set the agenda and the plot of the novel itself.
Throughout the novel the natural setting is closely linked to what Shubin had identified as a yearning for love.21 When in chapter 4 Elena leads the two young men into that most Turgenevan of loci – a bower of acacia bushes, the conversation is in danger of taking its earlier philosophical turn, but Shubin objects:
In Chapter 11 a lyrically described, natural setting of sunlit rye fields, larks and flowers forms a backdrop for the conversations and relaxation of another threesome: Bersenev, Shubin and Insarov, but they are all rivals for the hand of Elena. It is on the surface a joyous occasion, but Shubin’s merriment is not entirely genuine, as the author comments: ‘He himself was enjoying himself louder than everyone, but less than everyone’ [8, 57].
In his most melodramatically melancholic mood in Chapter 12, Shubin talks of hanging himself, but the shade of trees seems still to hold out hope:
Nature comes into its own in the description of the excursion to Tsaritsyno, but significantly it forms the background for that ‘yearning for love’ first mentioned by Shubin. He himself appears to play the chief role in this respect with his playful, but unsuccessful, pursuit of Zoe. Nevertheless, it is around Elena that the undercurrents of this theme really turn. It is for her love that both Shubin and Bersenev secretly yearn, while she, for her part, is becoming increasingly attracted to Insarov – a fact which only increases the frustration of the two Russians. As they are walking along in the rear of the group, Shubin jokes that they are the ‘reserves’: ‘"It is now Bulgaria that is there", he added, nodding towards Elena’ [8, 70]. Bersenev now has to face up to the new ironic twist given to his earlier statement about being ‘number two’ in love. Although he did not mean it in this sense, he is placed as ‘number two’ by Elena herself:
Bersenev is in the throes of experiencing, what he had referred to earlier as ‘love as sacrifice’, dismissed by Shubin as ‘good only for Germans’. It is at Tsaritsyno, however, that such ‘German’ idealism is most severely debunked, and the ‘thirst for love, excited by nature’ receives its most grotesque treatment. A group of drunken Germans suddenly emerges from behind a tall lilac bush, and their leader demands a kiss from the ladies [8, 74]. Shubin tries to save the day with his verbal sarcasm, but it is Insarov who emerges as the man of action, and true saviour of the ladies’ honour: he throws the insolent German into the lake. It is, indeed, Insarov who is in command of this natural setting, and, significantly, when the party had earlier taken to the lake, we are told that he alone knew how to row [8, 72].22
As we have seen, the debate beneath the lime tree establishes that nature is linked to love, and even more specifically - to a yearning for love. The point is made in chapter 9 when Bersenev anticipates a meeting with Elena:
This passage, with its two lonely symbolic pines, may be juxtaposed to Shubin’s earlier ‘yearning for love’, when, beneath two spreading beech trees, he suddenly espies the maid Annushka in a country store, lit by a shaft of light, which ‘shot upwards through the trees, sharply illuminating the whitish undersides of the dense leaves’ [8, 30]. Shubin’s pursuit of the maid (as the symbolism of such lighting suggests) is the underside of love.
The various resonances of the opening debate beneath the lime tree had already strongly reverberated in a remarkable passage in chapter 5. Bersenev is returning home alone at night after leaving a sulking and unresponsive Shubin:
If this passage clearly illustrates Shubin’s contention that nature: ‘arouses in us the demand for love, but is not capable of satisfying it’, it also bears out Bersenev’s own view that nature ‘also threatens us…there is both life and death within her’. Indeed, the image of nature ‘listening’ and ‘keeping watch’ is reminiscent of a similar passage in Rudin, which had also suggested the presence of something ominous in nature itself [6, 311].
In the future relationship between Elena and Insarov, nature, in the form of the grove [8, 109] where they meet, also provides a backdrop for love, but later the symbol of a tree suggests a fatal outcome. After visiting a retired public prosecutor, in a fruitless attempt to acquire a passport for Elena, Insarov suffers a severe chill. In his ensuing fever the ominous figure of the ‘prosecutor’ assumes an even more bizarre form:
This fall from a tree, which seems to echo the falling beetle of Bersenev’s nocturnal walk, hints at far more destructive forces in nature: it prefigures Insarov’s death from his second, and more serious, illness. When this occurs, Elena too is confronted with the dark side of nature, which can bring death as well as a sense of loneliness, and her questioning of the beauty of the natural world, of the meaning of the sky and the earth, takes on a religious dimension:
The fate of Elena has echoes of that opening debate beneath the lime tree. In her love for Insarov she herself has been ‘number two’, has had to take second place to Insarov’s love for Bulgaria. Her devotion to Insarov already has strong overtones of ‘love as sacrifice’, and this will be fully confirmed in her determination to carry on his life’s work, which is in fact service to all the ‘unifying words’ proposed by Bersenev as alternatives to egotistical happiness: ‘native land’, ‘science’, ‘freedom’, ‘justice’.
The natural world, as it is presented in the debate under the lime tree, is full of the sounds of insects, and Shubin distracts his friend’s attention away from the beauty of the surrounding scenery to its more humble inhabitants: ‘You will get bored gawping at the scenery. Look at some little, big-bellied insect crawling along a blade of grass, or at an ant bustling about’. He comments that such creatures behave as though their lives had meaning and, moreover, it is as though they reduce man to his true status within nature. A gnat, he claims, will feed off the blood of that king of creation – man.23 Ironically this reductive symbolism of insects conditions the way in which both Bersenev and Shubin are presented in the novel. Thus, as he lies beneath the lime tree, Bersenev’s long legs and raised knees are likened to the rear legs of a, ‘grasshopper’ [8, 7-8].24 On the other hand Bersenev thinks of Shubin as ‘a restless moth’ (nochnaia babochka) [8, 60]. A similar comparison is made by Elena in her diary: ‘Shubin is as elegant as a butterfly (babochka – the word is the same as ‘moth’), and admires his finery; which is what a butterfly does not do’ [8, 82)].
We have already seen that in the context of the nocturnal nature described in chapter 5, the falling of a drowsy beetle seems a strangely ominous sign, but at the same time it appears to turn Bersenev’s mind to thoughts of Elena. She herself is presented as the protectress of the insect world. In chapter 6 we are told of an incident in which she saved a fly from the jaws of a spider [8, 33], and her father considers that her sympathy extends to all creatures, apart from unworthy human beings such as himself: ‘Her heart is so broad, that it embraces the whole of nature, right down to the smallest cockroach or frog. In a word everything, with the exception of her own father’ [8, 40-41].
Insects, then, are a pointer to the way in which the characters react not only to nature, but to one another. In the opening scene, the shade under the lime tree is alive with the sounds of flies, bees and crickets, but there is no bird song: ‘No birds could be heard: they do not sing during hours of heat; but everywhere crickets were chirping, and it was pleasant to listen to this ardent sound of life, whilst sitting in cool, calm shade. It induced sleep and aroused day dreams’ [8, 11].
Birds in this novel are not associated with ‘sleep’ – they evoke flight and escape. Shubin has already given up one chance to go to Italy to further his art, but when Bersenev tells him that even if he went to Italy, he would do nothing: ‘You would only flap your wings, but you wouldn’t fly’ [8, 16], Shubin appears to agree, presenting his friend with the comic image of himself as a penguin without wings. [8, 16].
Bird imagery is more seriously used to portray the strivings of Elena: that yearning for love, described by Shubin, which Elena experiences at the age of sixteen: ‘Her soul would catch fire and be extinguished at one and the same time, she struggled like a bird in a cage, yet there was no cage…’ [8, 35]. After such inexplicable pangs, we are told that: ‘her tired wings, which had not taken off in flight would droop’ [8, 35].
At scarcely a page’s distance, but in the next chapter, we learn of an empty cage as a prominent feature in Insarov’s sparsely furnished room: ‘a huge cage, hung under the very ceiling; in this cage at one time had lived a nightingale’ [8, 36]. This imagery is later developed in Elena’s diary: ‘Why do I look with envy at birds flying by? I think, I would like to fly off with them. I would fly off - where, I don’t know, only far away, far from here’ [8, 79]. Insarov knows the route he is taking, but she does not know where she is going, and she asks herself a very Turgenevan question:‘where is my nest?’ [8, 82]. Elena, constrained by the ‘cage’ of her amorous yearning, and offered an empty cage by Insarov, will, indeed, fly off to freedom, like the birds she so much envies; perhaps she will find her ‘nest’. Unfortunately the imagery of birds suggests otherwise.
As Insarov lies ill in their room in Venice, Elena ponders on the gravity of his situation. Gazing through the window, she wonders whether the idea of illness and death has not been put into her head by the plot of the opera they have just seen:
The omen of the white seagull falling behind the black boat has links with another theme running through the novel – the symbol of the boat. It is during the excursion to Tsaritsyna with its boat trip that the romance of Elena and Insarov really begins, and in Venice the journey through the city by gondola is one of the happiest moments in their lives. At the same time the mood is undermined by Elena’s sporadic fear for Insarov’s health. Even more ominous is the hint of a Styx-like journey through a city linked to death: ‘"Venice is dying, Venice has been deserted" its inhabitants tell you’ [8, 151], and a warning comes from the author himself: ‘Anyone who has had his day, who has been broken by life, has no reason to visit Venice. The city will be bitter for him, like the memory of the unrealised dreams of his early years’ [8, 151].26
It is in Venice, immediately before the death of Insarov, that Elena dreams of another journey by boat. At first it seems to recreate the pleasure trip at Tsaritsyno, but the boat is filled with unknown people and is mysteriously moving under its own power. The lake becomes a sea, but a whirlwind seems to put an end to this journey and among those who appear to perish is her own father. The white whirlwind has now become snow, and she is travelling from Moscow through the snow with her childhood friend Katia. They appear to have reached the Solovetskii Monastery on the White Sea, and she is aware that her husband is imprisoned in one of its cramped cells, but the cart is suddenly engulfed in an abyss, and from its depths she hears the repeated cry of ‘Elena’. It is in fact, her name being called by the dying Insarov in the waking world, where the whiteness of his face is likened to the snow of her dream [8, 162].
The dream is obviously significant and lends itself to more general interpretation. In symbolic terms, the consequences of the trip to Tsaritsyno lead to Elena finding herself in the same boat as complete strangers, inexorably caught up in the movement of a foreign cause. There is a sea to cross to a new land, but there is a storm and a shipwreck, and the faces of those she has known, including her own father, flash before her. The second part of the dream returns her to the bleakness of her own country, and to her childhood values (the long dead Katia). It is a landscape dominated by the whiteness of snow (the pallor of death in her waking world), and her own husband is imprisoned in its ascetic fastness (the Solovetskii Monastery was a place of banishment for dissidents). In the end there is only an abyss from which come the dying words of her husband.
The hint of shipwreck in her dream seems ominous. Before the death of Insarov they had been intending to cross the Adriatic together in a ship hired by Rendich. What ultimately happens to Elena is far from clear. In the closing chapter her ultimate fate is presented with the ambiguity and lack of precision more typical of a dream itself. She may have survived to fight for the general Slav cause in Herzegovina, but there are also indications that, as in the real dream of the preceding chapter, she attempted the crossing with strangers and her ship perished in a storm.
* * * * * *
On the Eve shows Turgenev employing narrative techniques similar to those encountered in the earlier novels. The action, as we have seen, opens with dialogue, and this will be the main vehicle for narration throughout the novel. Nevertheless, the author as narrator is also in evidence. In Chapter 10 he introduces a biographical section on Uvar Ivanovich with the words: ‘Let us too, say a few words about him’ (skazhem i my neskol’ko slov o nem) [8, 49]. In Chapter 33 he gives his own unflattering view of Verdi’s opera La Traviatta: ‘fairly banal, one must say in all conscience’ (dovol’no poshluiu, skazat’ po sovesti) [8, 153], and in the final chapter prompts his reader’s memory about minor characters mentioned earlier [8, 146], but fuller authorial intrusions, giving detailed biographical and background data, do not have the role they play in A Nest of Gentlefolk. To this extent Turgenev may be said to have refined his narrative technique. At the same time, he resorts to devices we have encountered earlier: Elena’s diary (Chapter 16), which allows the reader to enter her innermost thoughts,27 and her letters – the first to Insarov [8, 106-9], and her final letter to her parents [8, 165], informing them of Insarov’s death, and the fact that she does not intend to return to Russia.
This is the last piece of firm narrative information the novel gives us about Elena. From this point on, Turgenev resorts to a technique of narration, more usually associated with his great rival Dostoevsky: suggestion through rumour, hearsay and speculation. It is only in his next novel, Fathers and Children, that Turgenev’s narrative technique will achieve that sureness of touch which will mark his full maturity as an artist.
Notes
1‘In order for such a character to be formed, perhaps such mixed elements are necessary as those which formed Shtol’ts’. I.A. Goncharov, Oblomov, Roman v chetyrekh chastiakh, (ed. L.S. Geiro) [Literaturnyi pamiatnik series] Leningrad, 1987, p.130. See also: N.V. Gogol’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Leningrad, 1937-52, Vol. 7, p.61.
2 A.S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh (izd. 4-oe), Leningrad, 1977-79, Vol.6, pp.210-11.
3 Richard Freeborn suggests that the influence of On the Eve on What is to be Done? Is probably greater than Fathers and Children. See: R. Freeborn, The Russian Revolutionary Novel: Turgenev to Pasternak, CUP, Cambridge, 1982, p.259, N.6.
4 N.A. Dobroliubov, Sobranie sochinenii v deviati tomakh, Moscow/Leningrad, 1961-64, Vol. 6, p.97. For reasons of censorship this was not Dobroliubov’s original title. See: Ibid. p.490. Freeborn relates Shubin’s image of the Russian intelligentsia sitting in a swamp, to an image already used by Dobroliubov in his article of 1859, What is Oblomovism?. See: Freeborn, Turgenev, p.93.
5 An ‘Aesopic’ term sometimes used by Russian critics to designate internal enemies and reactionaries.
6 See the commentary in [8, 518]. The devotion of the ‘Decembrist’ wives who followed their husbands into Siberian exile after the abortive coup of 1825 may also have been in Turgenev’s mind.
7 [8, 496]. By an odd irony, the name of Turgenev’s ‘Bulgarian’ hero hints at a Russian place name, which only a year later, on the emancipation of the serfs (1861), would be associated with peasant insurrection. The trouble in the Insarskii district of the Simbirsk province was suppressed by Dreniakin, but the authorities suspected that it had been foreign inspired. See: report of V.Babilin, quoted in F.Kuznetsov, Nigilisty, Moscow, 1983, p.132.
8 Dostoevsky, in Notes from Underground (1864), would later use the image of the bull, knocking down walls to disparage the ‘man of action’. See: Dostoevsky, PSS, Vol.5, p.103.
9 Both Freeborn (Turgenev, p.92) and Seeley (p.203) suggest the possibility of comic overtones in the portrayal of Insarov, which they link to Turgenev’s projection of a Don Quixote figure.
10 An article of 1858, inspired by his reading of Asia, and pointing to the inability of the Turgenevan hero to cope with the demands of love.
12 This dichotomy may be seen as the religious expression of the argument on being either number one or number two in love (i.e. self-assertion versus acceptance).
13 See the final line of stanza 7, chapter 3 of Pushkin’s Evgenii Onegin.
14 ‘There is no happiness outside a family, and outside one’s native land; everyone should sit in his nest and send down roots into his native land. What’s the point of clinging to the edge of another’s nest? [Chto lepit’sia k kraeshku chuzhogo gnezda?]’ (Letter to M.A.Markovich, 10/22 July 1859) [L.3,.320]. The letter is also relevant to the theme of Nest of Gentlefolk.
15 As the editors of PSS point out the quotation may be read both as the words of Mark Anthony on Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act 5, sc.5, and as a quotation from Polevoi’s translation of Hamlet, Act 1, sc. 2 [8, 548-9].
16 In his suggestion to Shubin that they go somewhere after the club [8, 134].
17 Such denigration of Russian peasant art will be further developed by Potugin in Smoke, and is in line with similar strictures of Belinsky [9,236; 555].
18 Turgenev had already given a polemical portrait of the ‘peasant-loving’ Slavophile, Konstantin Aksakov, as Liubozvonov in ‘The Homesteader Ovsianikov’ (Odnodvorets Ovsianikov) in Sportsman’s Sketches [4, 70-71;548-9]
19 Goncharov discussed the plans for his novels with Turgenev and would later accuse him of plagiarising many of his ideas, though it is also interesting that Turgenev adds an autobiographical detail to his depiction of Uvar Ivanovich – samoson ‘sleep-inducer’ (the comfortable chair in which Uvar Ivanovich reclines [8, 49]) was the amusing name given to a well-known chair in Turgenev’s household.
20 One of the leading Slavophiles A.S. Khomiakov invented a rotary steam engine, which he sought to patent in London and have exhibited at the Great Exhibition. Although he did not attend the Exhibition himself, he wrote an enthusiastic essay about it. See: Peter K. Christoff, An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Russian Slavophilism; A Study in Ideas, Vol.1 A.S. Xomjakov, Mouton & Co., S’Gravenhage, 1961, pp.84, 99, 100.
21 Freeborn sees nature as merely reflecting human emotions: ‘…nature in Turgenev’s novels remains ironically beautiful and impassive; it can reflect human emotions only when emotions are projected into it’. Freeborn, Turgenev, p.52.
22 The heroic symbolism of the ability to row goes back to Lermontov’s Hero of our Time. See: R. A. Peace, ‘The Role of Taman’ in Lermontov’s Geroy nashego vremeni’, Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. XLV, No.104, January, 1967, pp.12-29.
23 A similar point is made in Turgenev’s essay Hamlet and Don Quixote [8, 184].
24 Strekoza – literally a ‘dragon fly’, but ‘grasshopper’ seems more appropriate (strekot is the ‘chirr of grasshoppers’).
25 The ominous symbol of the ‘shot’ seagull, would be further developed by Chekhov in his play The Seagull.
26 This juxtaposition of a doomed hero and the dying city may well have influenced Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice.
27 Freeborn suggests that the fact that Turgenev’s original inspiration for his novel came from a diary (Karataev’s) may have been an influence here. Freeborn, Turgenev, pp.66-7.