Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

comparable to offer, to mock at it or keep it from their gates. He accused

Herz.en of being a tired and disillusioned man, who after 1 849 was

looking for a new divinity and had found it in the simple Russi.m

peasant. 2 'You erect an altar to this new and unknown God because

almost nothing is known about him, and one can . . . pray and believe

1 A. I. Herzen, 'Kontsy i nachala', First Letter, I 862. Solmmit sochifltflii

'l1 tridtsati tolflallh (Moscow, 19 54-65), vol. 1 6, p. 1 3 8. Later references to

Herzen's works ai:e to this edition.

1 Letter to Herzen, 8 November 1 86z.

FATH ERS AND C H I LDREN

and wait. This God does not begin to do what you expect of him;

this, you say, is temporary, accidental, injected by outside forces; your

God loves and adores that which you hate, hates that which you love;

(he J accepts precisely what you reject on his behalf: you avert your

eyes, you stop your ears . . .'1 'Either you must serve the revolution,

and European ideals as before. Or, if you now think that there is

nothing in all this, you must have the courage to look the devil in

both eyes, plead guilty to the whole of Europe-to its face-and not make

an open or implied exception for some coming Russian Messiah' - least

of all for the Russian peasant who is, in embryo, the worst conservative

of all, and cares nothing for liberal ideas.1 Turgenev's sober realism

never deserted him. He resporided to the faintest tremors of Russian

life; in particular, to the changes of expression on what he called 'the

swiftly altering physiognomy of those who belong to the cultured

section of Russian society'.8 He claimed to do no more than to record

what Shakespeare called the 'form and pressure' of the time. He faithfully described them all-the talkers, the idealists, the fighters, the cowards, the reactionaries, and the radicals-sometimes, as in Smoke,

with biting polemical irony, but, as a rule, so scrupulously, with so

much understanding for all the overlapping sides of every question,

so much unruffled patience, touched only occasionally with undisguised

irony or satire (without sparing his own character and views), that he

angered almost everyone at some time.

Those who still think of him as an uncommitted artist, raised high

above the ideological battle, may be surprised to learn that no one in

the entire history of Russian literature, perhaps of literature in general,

has been so ferociously and continuously attacked, both from the

right and from the left, as Turgenev. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy held

far more violent views, but they were formidable figures, angry

prophets treated with nervous respect even by their bitterest opponents.

Turgenev was not in the least formidable; he was amiable, sceptical,

'kind and soft as wax',� too courteous and too self-distrustful to frighten

anyone. He embodied no clear principles, advocated no doctrine, no

1 ibid. On this topic see Pis'ma K. D. KilfJe/i1111 i I. S. TMrge11�11 l A. /.

Gn-tst11M, ed. M. Dragomanov (Geneva. 1 89: ),)etten byTurgenev for r 86z-J.

• Letter to Herzen, 8 November r 86:.

1 Introduction to the collected novels, r88o, Pol11ot so6ra11ie socAitu11ii i

pise111 (Moscow/Leningrad, 196o-68), 8ocAi11e11iya, vol. r :, p. 303. later

references to Turgenev'a works are to this edition, unless otherwise indicated.

' See above, p. :67, note 1.

R U SSIAN T H IN K E R S

panacea for the 'accursed questions', as they arne to be called, personal

and social. 'He felt and understood the opposite sides of life,' said

Henry James of him, 'our Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, moralistic conventional standards were far away from him . . . half the charm of conversation with him was that one breathed an air in which cant

phrases . . • simply sounded ridiculous.'1 In a country in which readers,

and especially the young, to this day look to writers for moral direction,

he refused to preach. He was aware of the price he would have to pay

for such reticence. He knew that the Russian reader wanted to . be

told what to believe and how to live, expected to be provided with

clearly contrasted values, clearly distinguishable heroes and villains.

When the author did not provide this, Turgenev wrote, the reader

was dissatisfied and blamed the writer, since he found it difficult and

irritating to have to make up his own mind, find his own way. And,

indeed, it is true that Tolstoy never leaves you in doubt about whom

he favours and whom he condemns; Dostoevsky does not conceal

what he regards as the path of salvation. Among these great, tormented

LaocoOns Turgenev remained cautious and sceptical; the reader is left

in suspense, in a state of doubt: central problems are raised, and for the

most part left-it seemed to some a trifle complacently-unanswered.

No society demanded more of its authors than Russia, then or now.

T urgenev was accused of vacillation, temporising, infirmity of purpose,

of speaking with too many voices. Indeed, this very topic obsessed

him. Rudin, Asya, On the Eve, the major works of the 1 Ssos, are

preoccupied with weakness-the failure of men of generous heart,

sincerely held ideals, who remain impotent and give in without a

struggle to the forces of stagnation. Rudin, drawn partly from the

young Bakunin, partly from himself,1 is a man of high ideals, talks

well, fascinates his listeners, expresses views which Turgenev could

accept and defend. But he is made of paper. When he is faced with a

genuine crisis which calls for courage and resolution, he crumples and

collapses. His friend, Lezhnev, defends Rudin's memory: his ideals

were noble but he had 'no blood, no character'. In the epilogue (which

the author added as an afterthought to a later edition), after aimless

l Partial Portraill (London, ! 888), pp. z96-7. For James's view of

Turgenev see also Tltt .1rt of Fiction (Oxford, 1948).

1 His critical friend Herz:en said that Turgenev created Rudin 'in biblical

fashion-after his own image and likeness'. 'Rudin', he added, 'is Turgenev

the Second, plus (t�oslr11luwslziisya) a lot of . . . Bakunin's philosophical

jargon.' So6ra11it roclzifll!flii, vol. I I, p. 3 59·

FATHERS AND C H I LDREN

wanderings, Rudin dies bravely but uselessly on the barricades of

Paris in 1 848, something of which his prototype Bakunin was, in

Turgenev's view, scarcely capable. But even this was not open to him

in his native land; even if Rudin had blood and character, what could

he have done in the Russian society of his time? This 'superfluous'

man, the ancestor of all the sympathetic, futile, ineffective talkers in

Russian literature, should he, couid he, in the circumstances of his

time have declared war upon the odious aristocratic lady and her world

to which he capitulates? The reader is left without guidance. The

heroine of On the Eve, Elena, who looks for a heroic personality to

help her escape from the false existence of her parents and their milieu,

finds that even the best and most gifted Russians in her circle lack willpower, cannot act. She follows the fearless Bulgarian conspirator Insarov, who is thinner, drier, less civilised, more wooden than the