Ivan Turgenev

“ Like a young tree, already half torn from the bank, she bent eagerly over the stream, ready to abandon to it for ever the first blossom of her spring and her whole life. A man whose fate it has been to be the witness of such a passion, has lived through bitter moments if he has loved himself and not been loved. I shall for ever remember that devouring attention, that tender gaiety, that innocent self-oblivion, that glance, still a child's and already a woman's, that happy, as it were flowering smile that never left the half-parted lips and glowing cheeks.... ”

“ Insarov bowed down before her. 'O Elena!' he whispered, 'I don't dare to look at you.'
'Why? Andrei Petrovitch is so good. I was not ashamed before him. And what have I to be ashamed of? I am ready to tell all the world that I am yours. . . . And Andrei Petrovitch I trust like a brother.'
'He saved me!' cried Insarov. 'He is the noblest, kindest of men!'
'Yes . .. And do you know I owe everything to him? Do you know that it was he who first told me that you loved me? And if I could tell you everything. . . . Yes, he is a noble man.'
Insarov looked steadily at Elena. ”

“ I fancied those dear features, those eyes, those curls—in the narrow box, in the damp underground darkness—lying here, not far from me—while I was still alive, and, maybe, a few paces from my father. . . . I thought all this; I strained my imagination, and yet all the while the lines:
'From lips indifferent of her death I heard,
Indifferently I listened to it, too,'
were echoing in my heart. O youth, youth! little dost thou care for anything; thou art master, as it were, of all the treasures of the universe—even sorrow gives thee pleasure, even grief thou canst turn to thy profit ”

“ Shubin did not leave his room before night. It was already quite dark; the moon—not yet at the full—stood high in the sky, the milky way shone white, and the stars spotted the heavens, when Bersenyev, after taking leave of Anna Vassilyevna, Elena, and Zoya, went up to his friend's door. He found it locked. He knocked.
'Who is there?' sounded Shubin's voice.
'I,' answered Bersenyev.
'What do you want?'
'Let me in, Pavel; don't be sulky; aren't you ashamed of yourself?'
'I am not sulky; I'm asleep and dreaming about Zoya.'
'Do stop that, please; you're not a baby. Let me in. ”

“ Shubin leaped on to his feet and walked twice up and down, but Bersenyev bent his head, and his face was overcast by a faint flush.
'I don't altogether agree with you,' he began: 'nature does not always urge us ... towards love.' (He could not at once pronounce the word.) 'Nature threatens us, too; she reminds us of dreadful . . . yes, insoluble mysteries. Is she not destined to swallow us up, is she not swallowing us up unceasingly? She holds life and death as well; and death speaks in her as loudly as life.'
'In love, too, there is both life and death,' interposed Shubin. ”

“ All is lighted up and revealed with a distinctness that makes the heart sick, and all sleeps sadly together in this dull, but transparent atmosphere.
The hectic rose of yestereven’s twilight is not yet effaced; it will last till morning in this pale and starless sky. It is reflected in long rays on the cloudy surface of the Neva, which murmurs as it pushes its cold blue waves to the sea.
"Let us fly," said Ellis.
And without waiting for an answer she bore me to the other side of the river, above the square of the palace, near the foundry. Beneath us I heard footsteps and voices. ”

“ Kister paced several times up and down the room. His face burned, his breast heaved violently. He felt neither fear nor anger; but it sickened him to think what this man really was that he had once looked upon as a friend. The idea of the duel with Lutchkov was almost pleasant to him.... Once get free from the past, leap over this rock in his path, and then to float on an untroubled tide... 'Good,' he thought, 'I shall be fighting to win my happiness.' Masha's image seemed to smile to him, to promise him success. 'I'm not going to be killed! not I!' he repeated with a serene smile. ”

“ I am at any rate a woman of experience, and I shall not talk at random: forgive her, forgive your wife." Marya Dmitrievna's eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Only think: her youth, her inexperience . . . and who knows, perhaps, bad example; she had not a mother who could bring her up in the right way. Forgive her, Fedor Ivanitch, she has been punished enough."
The tears were trickling down Marya Dmitrievna's cheeks: she did not wipe them away, she was fond of weeping. Lavretsky sat as if on thorns. "Good God," he thought, "what torture, what a day I have had to-day!" ”

“ Volintsev came in and looked suspiciously at Lezhnyov and his sister. He had grown thin of late. They both began to talk to him, but he scarcely smiled in response to their jests, and looked, as Pigasov once said of him, like a melancholy hare. But there has certainly never been a man in the world who, at some time in his life, has not looked worse than that. Volintsev felt that Natalya was drifting away from him, and with her it seemed as if the earth was giving way under his feet. ”

“ Had Muzzio really become a sorcerer, and had he not already poisoned Valeria? She was ill . . . but what was her disease? While he lay, his head in his hand, holding his feverish breath, and given up to painful reflection, the moon rose again upon a cloudless sky; and together with its beams, through the half-transparent window-panes, there began, from the direction of the pavilion — or was it Fabio's fancy? — to come a breath, like a light, fragrant current . . . then an urgent, passionate murmur was heard . . . and at that instant he observed that Valeria was beginning faintly to stir. ”

“ Anna Vassilyevna, inform her at once that you will cut off her inheritance!'
'Nikolai Artemyevitch, for God's sake,' moaned Anna Vassilyevna.
'And when and how was this done? Who married you? where? how? Good God! what will all our friends think, what will the world say! And you, shameless hypocrite, could go on living under your parents' roof after such an act! Had you no fear of—the wrath of heaven?'
'Papa' said Elena (she was trembling from head to foot but her voice was steady) , 'you are at liberty to do with me as you please, but you need not accuse me of shamelessness, and hypocrisy. ”

“ Why isn't it all decided, all settled between us? Am I not your wife? Can a wife be parted from her husband?'
'Wives don't go into war,' he said with a half-mournful smile.
'Oh yes, when they can't stay behind, and I cannot stay here?'
'Elena, my angel! . . but think, I have, perhaps, to leave Moscow in a fortnight. I can't think of university lectures, or finishing my work.'
'What!' interrupted Elena, 'you have to go soon? If you like, I will stop at once this minute with you for ever, and not go home, shall I? Shall we go at once?'
Insarov clasped her in his arms with redoubled warmth. ”

“ And Marfa Timofyevna ran off without putting on her cap.
Lavretsky walked quickly up to Lisa.
"Lisa," he began in a voice of entreaty, "we are parting for ever, my heart is torn,--give me your hand at parting."
Lisa raised her head, her wearied eyes, their light almost extinct, rested upon him . . . . "No," she uttered, and she drew back the hand she was holding out. "No, Lavretsky (it was the first time she had used this name) , I will not give you my hand. What is the good? Go away, I beseech you. You know I love you . . . yes, I love you," she added with an effort; "but no . . . no." ”

“ At that instant I felt I would gladly have given my life, if only she should not grieve. I gazed at her—and though I could not understand why she was wretched, I vividly pictured to myself, how in a fit of insupportable anguish, she had suddenly come out into the garden, and sunk to the earth, as though mown down by a scythe. It was all bright and green about her; the wind was whispering in the leaves of the trees, and swinging now and then a long branch of a raspberry bush over Zinaïda's head. There was a sound of the cooing of doves, and the bees hummed, flying low over the scanty grass. ”

“ Sanin consented. He felt very happy. In the quietly monotonous, smooth current of life lie hid great delights, and he gave himself up to these delights with zest, asking nothing much of the present day, but also thinking nothing of the morrow, nor recalling the day before. How much the mere society of such a girl as Gemma meant to him! He would shortly part from her and, most likely, for ever; but so long as they were borne, as in Uhland's song, in one skiff over the sea of life, untossed by tempest, well might the traveller rejoice and be glad. ”

“ They are all looking at you, at you alone; the stars never do anything but look down upon lovers—that's why they are so charming. You are in love, I suppose, Andrei Petrovitch? . . . You don't answer me . . . why don't you answer?' Shubin began again: 'Oh, if you feel happy, be quiet, be quiet! I chatter because I am a poor devil, unloved, I am a jester, an artist, a buffoon; but what unutterable ecstasy would I quaff in the night wind under the stars, if I knew that I were loved! . . . Bersenyev, are you happy?'
Bersenyev was silent as before, and walked quickly along the smooth path. ”

“ Lezhnyov suddenly got up. ‘Well, marry me, Alexandra Pavlovna, and you will see all that’
Alexandra Pavlovna blushed up to her ears.
‘What did you say, Mihailo Mihailitch?’ she murmured in confusion.
‘I said what it has been for ever so long,’ answered Lezhnyov, ‘on the tip of my tongue to say a thousand times over. I have brought it out at last, and you must act as you think best. But I will go away now, so as not to be in your way. If you will be my wife . . . I will walk away . . . if you don’t dislike the idea, you need only send to call me in; I shall understand. . . ”

“ His name was Andrei Petrovitch Bersenyev; his companion, the fair-haired young man, was called Pavel Yakovlitch Shubin.
'Why don't you lie on your face, like me?' began Shubin. 'It's ever so much nicer so; especially when you kick up your heels and clap them together—like this. You have the grass under your nose; when you're sick of staring at the landscape you can watch a fat beetle crawling on a blade of grass, or an ant fussing about. It's really much nicer. But you've taken up a pseudo-classical pose, for all the world like a ballet-dancer, when she reclines upon a rock of paste-board. ”

“ All people are like one another, in soul as in body; each of us has brain, spleen, heart, and lungs made alike; and the so-called moral qualities are the same in all; the slight variations are of no importance. A single human specimen is sufficient to judge of all by. People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying each individual birch-tree.'
Katya, who was arranging the flowers, one at a time in a leisurely fashion, lifted her eyes to Bazarov with a puzzled look, and meeting his rapid and careless glance, she crimsoned up to her ears. Anna Sergyevna shook her head. ”

“ But Maria Nikolaevna, who was a first-rate horse-woman, reined her in; they had to take leave of Polozov, who in his inevitable fez and in an open dressing-gown, came out on to the balcony, and from there waved a batiste handkerchief, without the faintest smile, rather a frown, in fact, on his face. Sanin too mounted his horse; Maria Nikolaevna saluted Polozov with her whip, then gave her mare a lash with it on her arched and flat neck. The mare reared on her hind legs, made a dash forward, moving with a smart and shortened step, quivering in every sinew, biting the air and snorting abruptly. ”

“ Shubin lifted up his head. The tears shone bright on his cheeks in the moonlight, but there was a smile on his face.
'Andrei Petrovitch,' he said, 'you may think what you please about me. I am even ready to agree with you that I'm hysterical now, but, by God, I'm in love with Elena, and Elena loves you. I promised, though, to see you home, and I will keep my promise.'
He got up.
'What a night! silvery, dark, youthful! How sweet it must be to-night for men who are loved! How sweet for them not to sleep! Will you sleep, Andrei Petrovitch?'
Bersenyev made no answer, and quickened his pace. ”

“ Irina was sitting on a sofa between Prince Kokó and Madame H., once a celebrated beauty and wit, who had long ago become a repulsive old crone, with the odour of sanctity and evaporated sinfulness about her. On catching sight of Litvinov, Irina blushed and got up, and when he went up to her, she pressed his hand warmly. She was wearing a dress of black crépon, relieved by a few inconspicuous gold ornaments; her shoulders were a dead white, while her face, pale too, under the momentary flood of crimson overspreading it, was breathing with the triumph of beauty, and not of beauty alone ”

“ Vassilissa laughed.
'He is a one to joke, really, that Piotr Petrovitch!'
'Well, what did he say?'
'He is a fellow!'
Pyetushkov was silent again for a little.
'Vassilissa, you love me, don't you?' he asked her.
'Oh, so that's what you're after, too!'
Poor Pyetushkov felt a pang at his heart. Praskovia Ivanovna came in. They sat down to dinner. After dinner Praskovia Ivanovna betook herself to the shelf bed. Ivan Afanasiitch himself lay down on the stove, turned over and dropped asleep. A cautious creak waked him. Ivan Afanasiitch sat up, leaned on his elbow, looked: the door was open. ”

“ Could he have left the young officer's insolence unrebuked? could he have behaved like Herr Klüber? He had stood up for Gemma, he had championed her . . . that was so; and yet, there was an uneasy pang in his heart, and he was conscience-smitten, and even ashamed.
Not so Pantaleone—he was simply in his glory! He was suddenly possessed by a feeling of pride. A victorious general, returning from the field of battle he has won, could not have looked about him with greater self-satisfaction. Sanin's demeanour during the duel filled him with enthusiasm. ”

“ Unluckily for him, Platosha did not know how to keep up a conversation at all; she gave him very brief replies, as though she suspected that was not what Yasha had come for.
'Eh!' she repeated, hurriedly, almost irritably plying her knitting-needles. 'We all know : your mother was a darling ... a darling that she was. . . . And your father loved her as a husband should, truly and faithfully even in her grave; and he never loved any other woman' : she added, raising her voice and taking off her spectacles.
'And was she of a retiring disposition?' Aratov inquired, after a short silence. ”

“ Pardon me for having troubled you.’
‘Oh, not at all!’ said Lezhnyov, and he went away.
‘Well, what do you say to that?’ Darya Mihailovna asked of Rudin. ‘I had heard he was eccentric, but really that was beyond everything!’
‘His is the same disease as Pigasov’s,’ observed Rudin, ‘the desire of being original. One affects to be a Mephistopheles—the other a cynic. In all that, there is much egoism, much vanity, but little truth, little love. Indeed, there is even calculation of a sort in it. A man puts on a mask of indifference and indolence so that some one will be sure to think. ”

“ Ah! I could not give you back my youth, as I would, but I have laid no obligations on you, I have exacted no promise of any sort of you, my sweet! Do what you will, you are free as air, you are bound in no way, understand that, understand that!'
'But I can't live without you, Irina,' Litvinov interrupted, in a whisper now; 'I am yours for ever and always, since yesterday. . . . I can only breathe at your feet. . . .'
He stooped down all in a tremble to kiss her hands. Irina gazed at his bent head. ”

“ This letter proved to her clearer than all possible arguments that she had been right, when in the morning, at her parting with Rudin, she had involuntarily cried out that he did not love her! But that made things no easier for her. She sat perfectly still; it seemed as though waves of darkness without a ray of light had closed over her head, and she had gone down cold and dumb to the depths. The first disillusionment is painful for every one; but for a sincere heart, averse to self-deception and innocent of frivolity or exaggeration, it is almost unendurable. ”

“ Fabio went into his wife's room; she was lying on the bed, dressed, but was not asleep. Hearing his steps, she started, then again seemed delighted to see him just as in the garden. Fabio sat down beside the bed, took Valeria by the hand, and after a short silence, asked her, 'What was the extraordinary dream that had frightened her so the previous night? And was it the same sort at all as the dream Muzzio had described?' Valeria crimsoned and said hurriedly: 'О! no! no! I saw . . . a sort of monster which was trying to tear me to pieces.' 'A monster? in the shape of a man?' asked Fabio. ”

“ I drink to the health of Rudin! I drink to the comrade of my best years, I drink to youth, to its hopes, its endeavours, its faith, and its honesty, to all that our hearts beat for at twenty; we have known, and shall know, nothing better than that in life. . . . I drink to that golden time—to the health of Rudin!’
All clinked glasses with Lezhnyov. Bassistoff, in his enthusiasm, almost cracked his glass and drained it off at a draught. Alexandra Pavlovna pressed Lezhnyov’s hand.
‘Why, Mihailo Mihailitch, I did not suspect you were an orator,’ remarked Pigasov ”

“ Valentina Mihalovna flung herself into an arm-chair as though crushed by the weight of her indignation.
Marianna smiled for the first time.
'I do not doubt your virtue, past, present, and future,' she began, 'and I say so quite sincerely; but your indignation is needless; I have brought no disgrace on your roof. The young man to whom you allude . . . yes, I certainly . . . have come to love him.. . .'
'You love Monsieur Nezhdanov?'
'Yes, I love him.'
Valentina Mihalovna sat up in her chair.
'Good gracious, Marianna! ”

“ Sometimes it comes all at once, undoubting, glad as day; sometimes it smoulders like fire under ashes, and only bursts into a flame in the heart when all is over; sometimes it winds its way into the heart like a serpent, and suddenly slips out of it again. . . . Yes, yes; it is the great problem. But who does love in our days? Who is so bold as to love?’
And Rudin grew pensive.
‘Why is it we have not seen Sergeï Pavlitch for so long?’ he asked suddenly.
Natalya blushed, and bent her head over her embroidery frame. ”

“ Before you is a poor mortal, who has come to his senses long ago, and hopes other people too have forgotten his follies. I am going away for a long while; and though, as you will allow, I'm by no means a very soft creature, it would be anything but cheerful for me to carry away with me the idea that you remember me with repugnance.'
Anna Sergyevna gave a deep sigh like one who has just climbed up a high mountain, and her face was lighted up by a smile. She held out her hand a second time to Bazarov, and responded to his pressure. ”

“ While you gratify your vanity, you are deprived of the true consolations of thought; life—the essence of life—evades your petty and jaundiced criticism, and you end by scolding and becoming ridiculous. Only one who loves has the right to censure and find fault.’
‘Voilà, Monsieur Pigasov enterré,’ observed Darya Mihailovna. ‘What a genius you have for defining a man! But Pigasov certainly would not have even understood you. He loves nothing but his own individuality.’
‘And he finds fault with that so as to have the right to find fault with others,’ Rudin put in.
Darya Mihailovna laughed. ”

“ Madame Odintsov frowned. It annoyed her that he had given such a meaning to her words.
'Such gossip does not affect me, Yevgeny Vassilyitch, and I am too proud to allow it to disturb me. I am unhappy because ... I have no desires, no passion for life. You look at me incredulously; you think that's said by an "aristocrat," who is all in lace, and sitting in a velvet armchair. I don't conceal the fact: I love what you call comfort, and at the same time I have little desire to live. Explain that contradiction as best you can. But all that's romanticism in your eyes.'
Bazarov shook his head. ”

“ Dressed in a light check jacket and snow-white trousers, he was walking rapidly along the road; under his arm he carried a box wrapped up in green cloth.
'I beg your pardon, I believe I have kept you waiting,' he observed, bowing first to Bazarov, then to Piotr, whom he treated respectfully at that instant, as representing something in the nature of a second. 'I was unwilling to wake my man.'
'It doesn't matter,' answered Bazarov; 'we've only just arrived ourselves.'
'Ah! so much the better!' Pavel Petrovitch took a look round. 'There's no one in sight; no one hinders us. ”

“ Rudin involuntarily looked down upon Pigasov; he was a head and shoulders taller. Pigasov almost withered up with fury, and his sour face grew pale.
‘Darya Mihailovna is mistaken,’ he said in an unsteady voice, ‘I do not only attack women; I am not a great admirer of the whole human species.’
‘What can have given you such a poor opinion of them?’ inquired Rudin.
Pigasov looked him straight in the face.
‘The study of my own heart, no doubt, in which I find every day more and more that is base. I judge of others by myself. ”

“ It is not a worm, not the spirit of idle restlessness—it is the fire of the love of truth that burns in you, and clearly, in spite of your failings; it burns in you more hotly than in many who do not consider themselves egoists and dare to call you a humbug perhaps. I, for one, in your place should long ago have succeeded in silencing that worm in me, and should have given in to everything; and you have not even been embittered by it, Dmitri. You are ready, I am sure, to-day, to set to some new work again like a boy.’
‘No, brother, I am tired now,’ said Rudin. ”

“ Meeting no one, either in the corridor, on the stairs, or below, Nezhdanov slipped out into the little enclosure. It was a grey day with a low-hanging sky, and a damp breeze that stirred the tops of the grasses and set the leaves on the trees shaking; the factory made less rattle and roar than at the same time on other days; from its yard came a smell of coal, tar, and tallow. Nezhdanov took a sharp, searching look round, and went straight up to the old apple-tree which had attracted his attention on the very day of his arrival, when he had first looked out of the window of his little room. ”

“ He was breathless; rapture, but a rapture comfortless and hopeless, oppressed and tore his heart. For nothing in the world would he have consented that the words uttered by Irina should not have actually been uttered by her. . . . But then? those words could not for all that change the resolution he had taken. As before, it did not waver; it stood firm like an anchor. Litvinov had lost the thread of his own thoughts . . . yes; but his will still remained to him, and he disposed of himself as of another man dependent on him. ”

“ We cannot live together, can we? Then must I die so as to be with her? Is it not for that she has come; and is it not so she means to take me captive?
'Well; what then? If I must die, let me die. Death has no terrors for me now. It cannot, then, annihilate me? On the contrary, only thus and there can I be happy . . . as I have not been happy in life, as she has not. . . . We are both pure! Oh, that kiss!'
Platonida Ivanovna was incessantly coming into Aratov's room. ”

“ Here you write that my love has replaced everything for you, that even your former studies can never now be put into practice; but I ask myself, can a man live for love alone? Won't it weary him at last, won't he want an active career, and won't he cast the blame on what drew him away from active life? That's the thought that dismays me, that's what I am afraid of, and not what you imagine.'
Litvinov looked intently at Irina, and Irina intently looked at him, as though each would penetrate deeper and further into the soul of the other, deeper and further than word can reach, or word betray. ”

“ If what I have heard was truly your voice; if the feeling overmastering me is love; if you are now convinced that I love you, I, who till now have neither loved nor known any woman; if you know that since your death I have come to love you passionately, inconsolably; if you do not want me to go mad, — show yourself, Clara!'
Aratov had hardly uttered this last word, when all at once he felt that some one was swiftly approaching him from behind — as that day on the boulevard — and laying a hand on his shoulder. He turned round, and saw no one. ”