Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Shubin’s head sank on to his breast.
‘Yes,’ he resumed, after a prolonged silence, ‘Insarov deserves her. What nonsense, though! No one deserves her... Insarov... Insarov ... What’s the use of pretended modesty? We’ll own he’s a fine fellow, he stands on his own feet, though up to the present he has done no more than we poor sinners; and are we such absolutely worthless dirt? Am I such dirt, Uvar Ivanovitch? Has God been hard on me in every way? Has He given me no talents, no abilities? Who knows, perhaps, the name of Pavel Shubin will in time be a great name? ”

“ Uvar Ivanovitch leaned on his elbow and stared at the enthusiastic artist.
‘That’s a long way off,’ he said at last with his usual gesture; ‘we’re speaking of other people, why bring in yourself?’
‘O great philosopher of the Russian world!’ cried Shubin, ‘every word of yours is worth its weight in gold, and it’s not to me but to you a statue ought to be raised, and I would undertake it. There, as you are lying now, in that pose; one doesn’t know which is uppermost in it, sloth or strength! That’s how I would cast you in bronze. You aimed a just reproach at my egoism and vanity! Yes! yes! ”

“ The hotel where Insarov and Elena were staying was on the Riva dei Schiavoni; before they reached it they left the gondola, and walked several times round the Square of St. Mark, under the arches, where numbers of holiday makers were gathered before the tiny cafes. There is a special sweetness in wandering alone with one you love, in a strange city among strangers; everything seems beautiful and full of meaning, you feel peace and goodwill to all men, you wish all the same happiness that fills your heart. But Elena could not now give herself up without a care to the sense of her happiness ”

“ At last the moon rose, dark and red. Anna Vassilyevna was dozing; Zoya had poked her head out of window and was staring at the road. It occurred to Elena at last that she had not spoken to Insarov for more than an hour. She turned to him with a trifling question; he at once answered her, delighted. Dim sounds began stirring indistinctly in the air, as though thousands of voices were talking in the distance; Moscow was coming to meet them. Lights twinkled afar off; they grew more and more frequent ”

“ In Elena he detected signs of repressed annoyance against him—Shubin—and that was all. He looked at Bersenyev and at Insarov, and compared their faces from a sculptor’s point of view. ‘They are neither of them good-looking,’ he thought, ‘the Bulgarian has a characteristic face—there now it’s in a good light; the Great-Russian is better adapted for painting; there are no lines, there’s expression. But, I dare say, one might fall in love with either of them. She is not in love yet, but she will fall in love with Bersenyev,’ he decided to himself. ”

“ The whole party stepped out on to the grass, and at once made a move towards the garden. In front went Elena and Zoya with Insarov; Anna Vassilyevna, with an expression of perfect happiness on her face, walked behind them, leaning on the arm of Uvar Ivanovitch. He waddled along panting, his new straw hat cut his forehead, and his feet twinged in his boots, but he was content; Shubin and Bersenyev brought up the rear. ‘We will form the reserve, my dear boy, like veterans,’ whispered Shubin to Bersenyev. ‘Bulgaria’s in it now!’ he added, indicating Elena with his eyebrows. ”

“ And for a long time Lupoyarov still babbled on in the same way, and, as he went away, he promised to come again.
Worn out by the unexpected visit, Insarov lay down on the sofa. ‘So this,’ he said, mournfully looking at Elena, ‘is your younger generation! There are plenty who show off, and give themselves airs, while at heart they are as empty chatterboxes as that worthy.’
Elena made no reply to her husband; at that instant she was far more concerned at Insarov’s weakness than at the character of the whole younger generation in Russia. ”

“ Insarov. No talents, none, no poetry, any amount of capacity for work, an immense memory, an intellect not deep nor varied, but sound and quick, dry as dust, and force, and even the gift of the gab when the talk’s about his—between ourselves let it be said—tedious Bulgaria. What! do you say I am unjust? One remark more: you’ll never come to Christian names with him, and none ever has been on such terms with him. I, of course, as an artist, am hateful to him; and I am proud of it. Dry as dust, dry as dust, but he can crush all of us to powder. ”

“ Happiness! happiness! as long as life is not over, as long as we have the use of all our limbs, as long as we are going up, not down, hill! Damn it all!’ pursued Shubin with sudden vehemence, ‘we are young, and neither fools nor monsters; we will conquer happiness for ourselves!’
He shook his curls, and turned a confident almost challenging glance upwards to the sky. Bersenyev raised his eyes and looked at him. ”

“ Is it that in the face of nature we are more vividly conscious of all our incompleteness, our indefiniteness, or have we little of that content with which nature is satisfied, but something else—I mean to say, what we need, nature has not?’
‘H’m,’ replied Shubin, ‘I’ll tell you, Andrei Petrovitch, what all that comes from. You describe the sensations of a solitary man, who is not living but only looking on in ecstasy. Why look on? Live, yourself, and you will be all right. However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words, because she is dumb. ”

“ Nature is gently driving us to other living embraces, but we don’t understand, and expect something from nature herself. Ah, Andrei, Andrei, this sun, this sky is beautiful, everything around us is beautiful, still you are sad; but if, at this instant, you were holding the hand of a woman you loved, if that hand and the whole woman were yours, if you were even seeing with her eyes, feeling not your own isolated emotion, but her emotion—nature would not make you melancholy or restless then, and you would not be observing nature’s beauty; nature herself would be full of joy and praise ”

“ Bersenyev made no answer, and quickened his pace.
‘Where are you hurrying to?’ Shubin went on. ‘Trust my words, a night like this will never come again in your life, and at home, Schelling will keep. It’s true he did you good service to-day; but you need not hurry for all that. Sing, if you can sing, sing louder than ever; if you can’t sing, take off your hat, throw up your head, and smile to the stars. 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?... ”

“ It is a cry for Men. Turgenev sought in vain in life for a type of man to satisfy Russia, and ended by taking no living model for his hero, but the hearsay Insarov, a foreigner. Russia has not yet produced men of this type. But the artist does not despair of the future. Here we come upon one of the most striking figures of Turgenev—that of Uvar Ivanovitch. He symbolises the ever-predominant type of Russian, the sleepy, slothful Slav of to-day, yesterday, and to-morrow. He is the Slav whose inherent force Europe is as ignorant of as he is himself. ”

“ You go to Elena now, and I will make my way to—Annushka, you fancy? No, my dear fellow, worse than that; to Prince Tchikurasov. He is a Maecenas of a Kazan-Tartar stock, after the style of Volgin. Do you see this note of invitation, these letters, R.S.V.P.? Even in the country there’s no peace for me. Addio!’ Bersenyev listened to Shubin’s tirade in silence, looking as though he were just a little ashamed of him. Then he went into the courtyard of the Stahovs’ house. And Shubin did really go to Prince Tchikurasov, to whom with the most cordial air he began saying the most insulting things. ”

“ In vain Bersenyev wandered from one dirty staircase to another, in vain he called first to a doorkeeper, then to a passer-by. Porters even in Petersburg try to avoid the eyes of visitors, and in Moscow much more so; no one answered Bersenyev’s call; only an inquisitive tailor, in his shirt sleeves, with a skein of grey thread on his shoulder, thrust out from a high casement window a dirty, dull, unshorn face, with a blackened eye; and a black and hornless goat, clambering up on to a dung heap, turned round, bleated plaintively, and went on chewing the cud faster than before. ”

“ Bersenyev talked with Elena about university life, and his own plans and hopes; Shubin listened without speaking, ate with an exaggerated show of greediness, and now and then threw comic glances of despair at Zoya, who responded always with the same phlegmatic smile. After dinner, Elena with Bersenyev and Shubin went into the garden; Zoya looked after them, and, with a slight shrug of her shoulders, sat down to the piano. ”

“ In the difficult art of literary perspective, in the effective grouping of contrasts in character and the criss-cross of the influence of the different individuals, lies the secret of Turgenev’s supremacy. As an example the reader may note how he is made to judge Elena through six pairs of eyes. Her father’s contempt for his daughter, her mother’s affectionate bewilderment, Shubin’s petulant criticism, Bersenyev’s half hearted enthralment, Insarov’s recognition, and Zoya’s indifference, being the facets for converging light on Elena’s sincerity and depth of soul. ”

“ With Andrei Petrovitch it’s quite a different thing. I am ready to chat with him the whole day long. But he too always talks of Insarov. And such terrible facts he tells me about him! I saw him in a dream last night with a dagger in his hand. And he seemed to say to me, “I will kill you and I will kill myself!” What silliness!
‘Oh, if some one would say to me: “There, that’s what you must do!” Being good—isn’t much; doing good... yes, that’s the great thing in life. But how is one to do good? Oh, if I could learn to control myself! I don’t know why I am so often thinking of Mr. Insarov. ”

“ It is a sin to sing where the dead are lying: and at that instant, in that room, the past of which he had spoken was dying, the past of the people met together in it. It was dying to be born again in a new life—doubtless—still it was death.
‘Come, Elena,’ began Insarov, turning to his wife, ‘I think everything is done? Everything paid, and everything packed. There’s nothing more except to take the box down.’ He called his landlord. ”