" 'Arkadi was telling us just now that you do not acknowledge any authorities whatsoever—that you do not believe in them?'
" 'But why should I acknowledge them? And what should I believe in? When anyone talks sense, I agree, and that's all.'
" 'And all the Germans [scientists] talk sense?' asked Pavel Petrovich, and his face assumed an expression as impassive, as remote, as if he had withdrawn to some empyrean height.
" 'Not all,' replied Bazarov with a short yawn. He obviously did not care to continue the debate. . . .
"'For my own part,' Pavel Petrovich began again, not without some effort, 'I am so unregenerate as not to like Germans. . . .
My brother, for instance, is very favorably inclined toward them. . . . But now they've all turned chemists and materialists—'
" 'A chemist who knows his business is twenty times as useful as any poet,' broke in Bazarov."
On a collecting expedition Bazarov has found what he and Turgenev call a rare specimen of beetle. The term of course, is not specimen, but species, and that particular water-beetle is not a rare species. Only people who know nothing about natural history confuse specimen with species. In general Turgenev's descriptions of Bazarov's collecting are rather lame.
One will notice that despite Turgenev having prepared the first clash rather carefully, Uncle Pavel's rudeness strikes the reader as not very realistic. By "realism," of course, I merely indicate what an average reader in an average state of civilization feels as conforming to an average reality of life. Now in the reader's mind Uncle Pavel has already been imprinted as an image of a very fashionable, very experienced, very well groomed gentleman who would hardly take the trouble to heckle so viciously a chance boy, his nephew's friend and his brother's guest.
I have mentioned that a curious feature of Turgenev's structure is the spreading of antecedents over the action part of the story. An illustration comes at the end of chapter 6, "And Arkadi told Bazarov the story of Uncle Pavel." The story is passed on to the reader in chapter 7 and conspicuously interrupts the flow of the story which has already started. We read here 52
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about Uncel Pavel's love affair with the fascinating and fateful Princess R. back in the 1830s. This romantic lady, a sphinx with a riddle who finally found its solution in organized mysticism, around 1838 leaves Pavel Kirsanov and in 1848 she dies.
Since then, till now, 1859, Pavel Kirsanov has retired to his brother's country seat.
Now further on we discover that Fenichka has not only replaced his [dead] wife Mary in the affections of Nikolay Kirsanov but has also replaced Princess R. in the affections of Uncle Pavel, another case of simple structural symmetry. We are shown Fenichka's room through Uncle Pavel's eyes:
"The small low-ceiled room in which he found himself was very clean and cozy. It smelt of the freshly painted floor, of camomile and melissa. Along the walls were ranged chairs with lyre-shaped backs, bought by the late general [as far back as the campaign of 1812]; in one corner was a high, small bedstead under a muslin canopy, near an ironbound chest with a rounded lid. In the opposite corner a little image-lamp was burning before a big dark icon of St. Nikolay the Wonder-Worker, a tiny porcelain egg hung by a red ribbon from the protruding gold halo down the saint's breast; on the window sills stood greenish glass jars of last year's jam, carefully tied and with the light green showing through them; on their paper tops Fenichka herself had written in big letters Gooseberry —Nikolay Petrovich was particularly fond of this jam.
Near the ceiling, on a long cord, hung a cage with a bobtailed siskin; it was constantly chirping and hopping about, and the cage was constantly shaking and swinging, while hempseeds fell with a light tap on the floor. On the wall, just above a small chest of drawers, hung some rather poor photographs of Nikolay Petrovich in various poses, taken by some itinerant photographer; there, too, hung a photograph of Fenichka herself, which was an absolute failure: an eyeless face wearing a forced smile, in a dingy frame—one could make out nothing more. And above Fenichka, General Yermolov, in a Circassian felt cloak, scowled menacingly upon the Caucasian mountains in the distance, from beneath a little pincushion in the form of a shoe, which came down right over his eyebrows."
Now look at the way the story pauses again to allow the author to describe Fenichka's past:
"Nikolay Petrovich had made Fenichka's acquaintance three years before when he happened to stay overnight at an inn in a remote district town. He was agreeably struck by the cleanness of the room assigned to him, by the freshness of the bed linen. . . . Nikolay Kirsanov had at that time just moved into his new home and not wishing to keep serfs in the house, was on the lookout for hired servants; the landlady for her part complained of the small number of transients in the town, and the hard times; he proposed to her to come into his house in the capacity of housekeeper; she consented. Her husband had long been dead, leaving her an only daughter—Fenichka . . . who was at that time seventeen . . . she lived ever so quietly, ever so unassumingly, and only on Sundays did Nikolay Petrovich notice in the parish church, somewhere off on the side, the delicate profile of her small white face. More than a year passed thus."
Nikolay treats her for an inflamed eye, which was soon well again, "but the impression she had made on Nikolay did not pass away so soon. He was forever haunted by that pure, delicate, timorously lifted face; he felt on his palms that soft hair, and saw those innocent, slightly parted lips, through which pearly teeth gleamed moistly in the sun. He began to watch her with great attention in church, he tried to get into conversation with her. . . .
"By degrees she began to get used to him, but was still shy in his presence, when suddenly Arina, her mother, died of cholera. Which way was Fenichka to turn? She inherited from her mother a love for order, common sense, and sedateness; but she was so young, so lonely. Nikolay Petrovich was himself so good and modest. There is no need to relate the rest."
The details are admirable, that inflamed eye is a work of art, but the structure is lame and the paragraph concluding the account is lame and coy. "There is no need to relate the rest." A strange and silly remark implying that some things are so well known to readers that they are not worth describing. Actually the gentle reader should not find it very difficult to imagine precisely the event which Turgenev so prudently and prudishly masks.
Bazarov meets Fenichka—and no wonder her baby falls for him. We know already about that way Bazarov has with simple little souls—bearded peasants, urchins, maid-servants. We also hear, with Bazarov, old Kirsanov playing Schubert.
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The beginning of chapter 10 well illustrates another typical Turgenev device — an intonation that we hear in the epilogues of his short novels, or, as here, when the author finds it necessary to pause and survey the arrangement and distribution of his characters. Here is how it goes—it is really a pause for station identification. Bazarov is classified through the reactions of other people toward him:
"Everyone in the house had grown used to him, to his careless manners and his monosyllabic and abrupt speech. Fenichka in particular had become so used to him that one night she sent to wake him up. Mitya had had convulsions. And Bazarov had come and, half joking, half yawning after his wont, had stayed two hours with her and relieved the child. On the other hand Pavel Kirsanov had grown to detest Bazarov with all the strength of his soul; he regarded him as proud, impudent, cynical, and plebian. He suspected that Bazarov had no respect for him—him, Pavel Kirsanov. Nikolay Petrovich was rather afraid of the young "nihilist," and entertained doubts whether his influence over Ar-kadi was for the good, but he willingly listened to him and was willingly present at his scientific and chemical experiments. Bazarov had brought his microscope with him and busied himself with it for hours on end. The servants, too, took to him, though he poked fun at them; they felt that, after all, he was one with them under the skin, that he was not a mas
ter. . . . The boys on the farm simply ran after the 'doctor' like puppies. The old man Prokofyich was the only one who did not like him; he handed him the dishes at table with a surly face. . . . Prokofyich in his own way was quite as much of an aristocrat as Pavel Kirsanov."
Now for the first time in the novel we have the tedious Eavesdropping Device, which has been so well described in regard to Lermontov:
"One day they had lingered rather late before returning home; Nikolay Petrovich went to meet them in the garden, and as he reached the arbor he suddenly heard the quick steps and the voices of the two young men. They were walking on the other side of the arbor and could not see him.
" 'You don't know my father well enough,' Arkadi was saying. 'Your father's a good fellow,' Bazarov pronounced, 'but he's a back number; his act is finished.'
"Nikolay Petrovich strained his ears. Arkadi made no answer.
"The 'back number' remained standing motionless for a couple of minutes and then slowly shuffled off home.
'The day before yesterday I saw him reading Pushkin,' Bazarov went on in the meantime. 'Explain to him, please, that it's of no earthly use. For he isn't a little boy, after all; it's time to drop all such rubbish. The very idea of being romantic at this time of day! Give him something useful to read.'
' 'Such as what?' asked Arkadi.
" 'Oh, I think Buchner's Stoff und Kraft for a start.'
" 'That's what I think,' Arkadi observed approvingly, 'Stoff und Kraft is written in popular language.'
It would seem that Turgenev is casting around for some artificial structures to enliven his story: "Stoff und Kraft" (Matter and Force) provides a little comic relief. Then a new puppet is produced in Matthew Kolyazin, the cousin of the Kirsanovs, who had been brought up by Uncle Kolyazin. This Matthew Kolyazin, who happens to be a governmental inspector, checking on the activities of the local town mayor, will be instrumental in permitting Turgenev to arrange matters in such a way that Arkadi and Bazarov will take a trip to town, which trip in its turn will provide Bazarov with his meeting with a fascinating lady, not unrelated to Uncle Pavel's Princess R.
In the second round of the fight between Uncle Pavel and Bazarov they come to grips at evening tea two weeks after their first fight. (The intervening meals, of which there have been perhaps as many as fifty—three per day multiplied by fourteen
—are only vaguely imagined by this reader.) But the ground must be cleared first:
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The conversation turned to one of the neighboring landowners. 'Trash; just a miserable little aristocrat,' indifferently remarked Bazarov, who had met the fellow in Petersburg.
" 'Allow me to ask you,' began Pavel Petrovich, and his lips began to tremble, 'according to your conceptions the words
"trash" and "aristocrat" signify one and the same thing.'
"'I said "just a miserable little aristocrat," ' replied Bazarov, lazily swallowing a sip of tea. . . .
"Pavel Petrovich turned white.
'That's an entirely different matter. I'm under no compulsion whatever to explain to you now why I sit twiddling my thumbs, as you are pleased to put it. I wish to tell you merely that aristocracy is a principle, and in our time none but immoral or frivolous people can live without principles.' . . .
"Pavel Petrovich puckered up his eyes a little. 'So that's it!' he observed in a strangely composed voice. 'Nihilism is to cure all our woes, and you, you are our heroes and saviors. So. But why do you berate others—even those same denunciators, say?
Don't you do as much chattering as all the others?' . . . 'Our argument has gone too far; it's better to cut it short, I think. But I'll be quite ready to agree with you,' Bazarov added, getting up, 'when you bring forward a single institution in our present mode of life, either domestic or social, which does not call forth complete and merciless repudiation. . . .
'Take my advice, Pavel Petrovich, give yourself a couple of days to think about it; you're not likely to find anything right off.
Go through all our classes and think rather carefully over each one, and in the meantime Arkadi and I will-'
'Go on scoffing over everything,' Pavel Petrovich broke in. 'No, we will go on dissecting frogs. Come Arkadi. Good-by for the present, gentlemen.' "
Curiously enough, Turgenev is still engaged in describing the minds of his characters, in setting up his scenes rather than in having the protagonists act. This is especially clear in chapter 11 where the two brothers Pavel and Nikolay are compared, and where occurs incidentally that charming little landscape ("Evening had come, the sun had hid behind a small aspen grove which lay a quarter of a mile from the garden; its shadow spread endlessly across the still fields. . . .") The next chapters are devoted to Arkadi's and Bazarov's visit to town. The town appears now as a middle point and a structural link between the Kirsanov country seat and the Bazarov country place, which is twenty-five miles from the town in another direction.
Some rather obvious grotesque personages are shown. Mme. Odintsov is first mentioned in a conversation at the house of a feminist progressive lady: 'Are there any pretty women here?' inquired Bazarov, as he drank up a third glass of wine.
'Yes, there are,' answered Eudoxia, 'but then they're all such empty-headed creatures. Mon amie Odintsov, for instance, isn't at all bad-looking. It's a pity that her reputation is sort of . . .' " Bazarov sees Mme. Odintsov for the first time at the Governor's ball.
"Arkadi turned and saw a tall woman in a black dress standing at the door of the room. He was struck by the dignity of her carriage. Her bare arms lay gracefully along her slender waist; gracefully some light sprays of fuchsia drooped from her gleaming hair on to her sloping shoulders; her clear eyes looked out from under a somewhat overhanging white brow, with a tranquil and intelligent expression—tranquil, precisely, and not pensive—and a scarcely perceptible smile hovered on her lips. Her face radiated a gracious and gentle force. . . .
"Bazarov's attention, too, was directed to Mme. Odintsov.
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" 'Who in the world is she?' he remarked. 'She's different from the rest of the females here.' " Arkadi is presented to her and asks her for the next mazurka.
"Arkadi made up his mind that he had never before met such an attractive woman. He could not get the sound of her voice out of his ears; the very folds of her dress seemed to hang upon her differently from all other women—more gracefully and amply—and her movements were peculiarly smooth and natural."
Instead of dancing (he was a bad dancer) Arkadi chats with her during the mazurka, "permeated by the happiness of being near her, talking to her, looking at her eyes, her lovely brow, all her endearing dignified, clever face. She said little, but from some of her observations Arkadi concluded that this young woman had already contrived to feel and think a great many things.
'Who was that you were standing with,' she asked him, 'when M'sieu' Sitnikov brought you to me?'
" 'Oh, so you noticed him?' Arkadi asked in his turn. 'He has a splendid face, hasn't he? He's a certain Bazarov, a friend of mine.'
Arkadi fell to talking about this "friend" of his. He spoke of him in such detail, and with such enthusiasm, that Mme.
Odintsov turned toward him and gave him an attentive look. . . .
"The Governor came up to Mme. Odintsov, announced that supper was ready, and, with a careworn face, offered her his arm. As she went away, she turned to give a last smile and nod to Arkadi. He bowed low, followed her with his eyes (how graceful her waist seemed to him, the grayish luster of black silk apparently poured over it!). . . .
'Well?' Bazarov questioned him as soon as Arkadi had rejoined him in the corner. 'Have a good time? A gentleman has been telling me just now that this lady is—my, my, my! But then the gentleman himself strikes me as very much of a fool. Well, now, according to you, is she really—my, my, my?'
T don't quite understand that de
finition,' answered Arkadi.
'Oh, now! What innocence!'
'In that case, I don't understand the gentleman you quote. Mme. Odintsov is indisputably most endearing, but she behaves so coldly and austerely, that — '
"'Still waters—you know!' Bazarov put in quickly. 'She's cold, you say. That's just where the taste comes in. For you like ice cream, don't you?'
"'Perhaps,' Arkadi muttered. T can't judge about that. She wishes to make your acquaintance and asked me to bring you to see her.'
T can imagine how you've painted me! However, you did the right thing. Take me along. Whatever she may be—whether she's simply a provincial lioness, or an "emancipated woman," à la Kukshina [Eudoxia], the fact remains that she's got a pair of shoulders whose like I've not set eyes on for a long while.' "
This is Turgenev at his best, the delicate and vivid paintbrush (that gray gloss is great), a marvelous sense of color and light, and shade. The my-my-my is the famous Russian exclamation oy-oy-oy —still preserved in New York City among Armenian, Jewish, and Greek groups stemming from Russia. Note the first revelation when the following day he is presented to her that Bazarov, the strong man, may lose his confidence. " Arkadi presented Bazarov, and noticed with secret wonder that he seemed embarrassed, while Mme. Odintsov remained perfectly tranquil, as she had been the night before. Bazarov himself was conscious of his embarrassment and was irritated by it. 'Of all things! Frightened of a petticoat!' he thought, and, 56
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sprawled out in an armchair just like Sitnikov, began talking with an exaggerated unrestraint, while Mme. Odintsov kept her clear eyes fixed on him." Bazarov, the confirmed plebian, is going to fall madly in love with the aristocratic Anna.
Turgenev now uses the device which is beginning to pall—the pause for a biographical sketch where the past of the young widow Anna Odintsov is described. (Her marriage to Odintsov had lasted six years until his death.) She sees the charm of Bazarov through the rough exterior. An important observation on Turgenev's part is: Vulgarity alone repelled her, and no one could have accused Bazarov of vulgarity.
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