On the Eve , livre ebook

The Floating Press - Ivan Turgenev

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

171 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

On the eve of the Crimean war a young woman, Elena, is pursued by two men. She disappoints them and her affected, social-climbing family when she marries a Bulgarian revolutionary. Sickness and war intervene in their lives, sending tragic shock waves through an entire society.

Informations

Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 juin 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775417767
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

ON THE EVE
* * *
IVAN TURGENEV
Translated by
CONSTANCE GARNETT

*

On the Eve From an 1895 edition ISBN 978-1-775417-76-7 © 2010 The Floating Press
While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.
Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Introduction The Names of the Characters in the Book I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX XXXI XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV
Introduction
*
This exquisite novel, first published in 1859, like so many great worksof art, holds depths of meaning which at first sight lie veiled underthe simplicity and harmony of the technique. To the English reader Onthe Eve is a charmingly drawn picture of a quiet Russian household,with a delicate analysis of a young girl's soul; but to Russians it isalso a deep and penetrating diagnosis of the destinies of the Russia ofthe fifties.
Elena, the Russian girl, is the central figure of the novel. Incomparing her with Turgenev's other women, the reader will remark thathe is allowed to come into closer spiritual contact with her than evenwith Lisa. The successful portraits of women drawn by men in fiction aregenerally figures for the imagination to play on; however much that istold to one about them, the secret springs of their character are lefta little obscure, but when Elena stands before us we know all theinnermost secrets of her character. Her strength of will, her serious,courageous, proud soul, her capacity for passion, all the play of herdelicate idealistic nature troubled by the contradictions, aspirations,and unhappiness that the dawn of love brings to her, all this isconveyed to us by the simplest and the most consummate art. The diary(chapter xvi.) that Elena keeps is in itself a masterly revelation ofa young girl's heart; it has never been equalled by any other novelist.How exquisitely Turgenev reveals his characters may be seen by anexamination of the parts Shubin the artist, and Bersenyev the student,play towards Elena. Both young men are in love with her, and thedescription of their after relations as friends, and the feelings ofElena towards them, and her own self-communings are interwoven withunfaltering skill. All the most complex and baffling shades of themental life, which in the hands of many latter-day novelists build upcharacters far too thin and too unconvincing, in the hands of Turgenevare used with deftness and certainty to bring to light that greatkingdom which is always lying hidden beneath the surface, beneaththe common-place of daily life. In the difficult art of literaryperspective, in the effective grouping of contrasts in character andthe criss-cross of the influence of the different individuals, lies thesecret of Turgenev's supremacy. As an example the reader may note how heis made to judge Elena through six pairs of eyes. Her father's contemptfor his daughter, her mother's affectionate bewilderment, Shubin'spetulant criticism, Bersenyev's half hearted enthralment, Insarov'srecognition, and Zoya's indifference, being the facets for converginglight on Elena's sincerity and depth of soul. Again one may noteTurgenev's method for rehabilitating Shubin in our eyes; Shubin issimply made to criticise Stahov; the thing is done in a few seeminglycareless lines, but these lines lay bare Shubin's strength and weakness,the fluidity of his nature. The reader who does not see the art whichunderlies almost every line of On the Eve is merely paying the highesttribute to that art; as often the clear waters of a pool conceal itssurprising depth. Taking Shubin's character as an example of creativeskill, we cannot call to mind any instance in the range of Europeanfiction where the typical artist mind, on its lighter sides, has beenanalysed with such delicacy and truth as here by Turgenev. Hawthorne andothers have treated it, but the colour seems to fade from their artistcharacters when a comparison is made between them and Shubin. And yetTurgenev's is but a sketch of an artist, compared with, let us say, theadmirable figure of Roderick Hudson. The irresponsibility, alertness,the whimsicality and mobility of Shubin combine to charm and irritatethe reader in the exact proportion that such a character affects him inactual life; there is not the least touch of exaggeration, and all thevalues are kept to a marvel. Looking at the minor characters, perhapsone may say that the husband, Stahov, will be the most suggestive, andnot the least familiar character, to English households. His essentiallymasculine meanness, his self-complacency, his unconscious indifferenceto the opinion of others, his absurdity as ' un pere de famille ' isbalanced by the foolish affection and jealousy which his wife, AnnaVassilyevna, cannot help feeling towards him. The perfect balance andduality of Turgenev's outlook is here shown by the equal cleverness withwhich he seizes on and quietly derides the typical masculine and typicalfeminine attitude in such a married life as the two Stahovs'.
Turning to the figure of the Bulgarian hero, it is interesting to findfrom the Souvenirs sur Tourguenev (published in 1887) that Turgenev'sonly distinct failure of importance in character drawing, Insarov, wasnot taken from life, but was the legacy of a friend Karateieff, whoimplored Turgenev to work out an unfinished conception. Insarov is afigure of wood. He is so cleverly constructed, and the central ideabehind him is so strong, that his wooden joints move naturally, and thespectator has only the instinct, not the certainty, of being cheated.The idea he incarnates, that of a man whose soul is aflame withpatriotism, is finely suggested, but an idea, even a great one, doesnot make an individuality. And in fact Insarov is not a man, he is anautomaton. To compare Shubin's utterances with his is to perceive thatthere is no spontaneity, no inevitability in Insarov. He is a patrioticclock wound up to go for the occasion, and in truth he is very useful.Only on his deathbed, when the unexpected happens, and the machineryruns down, do we feel moved. Then, he appears more striking dead thanalive—a rather damning testimony to the power Turgenev credits himwith. This artistic failure of Turgenev's is, as he no doubt recognised,curiously lessened by the fact that young girls of Elena's loftyidealistic type are particularly impressed by certain stiff types ofmen of action and great will-power, whose capacity for moving straighttowards a certain goal by no means implies corresponding brain-power.The insight of a Shubin and the moral worth of a Bersenyev are not sovaluable to the Elenas of this world, whose ardent desire to be madegood use of, and to seek some great end, is best developed by strengthof aim in the men they love.
And now to see what the novel before us means to the Russian mind, wemust turn to the infinitely suggestive background. Turgenev's genius wasof the same force in politics as in art; it was that of seeing aright.He saw his country as it was, with clearer eyes than any man beforeor since. If Tolstoi is a purer native expression of Russia's force,Turgenev is the personification of Russian aspiration working with theinstruments of wide cosmopolitan culture. As a critic of his countrymennothing escaped Turgenev's eye, as a politician he foretold nearly allthat actually came to pass in his life, and as a consummate artist,led first and foremost by his love for his art, his novels are undyinghistorical pictures. It is not that there is anything allegorical inhis novels—allegory is at the furthest pole from his method: it isthat whenever he created an important figure in fiction, that figure isnecessarily a revelation of the secrets of the fatherland, the soil, therace. Turgenev, in short, was a psychologist not merely of men, but ofnations; and so the chief figure of On the Eve , Elena, foreshadowsand stands for the rise of young Russia in the sixties. Elena is youngRussia, and to whom does she turn in her prayer for strength? Not toBersenyev, the philosopher, the dreamer; not to Shubin, the man carriedoutside himself by every passing distraction; but to the strong man,Insarov. And here the irony of Insarov being made a foreigner, aBulgarian, is significant of Turgenev's distrust of his country'sweakness. The hidden meaning of the novel is a cry to the coming mento unite their strength against the foe without and the foe within thegates; it is an appeal to them not only to hasten the death of theold regime of Nicolas I, but an appeal to them to conquer theirsluggishness, their weakness, and their apathy. It is a cry for Men.Turgenev sought in vain in life for a type of man to satisfy Russia, andended by taking no living model for his hero, but the hearsay Insarov, aforeigner. Russia has not yet produced men of this type. But the artistdoes not despair of the future. Here we come upon one of the moststriking figures of Turgenev—that of Uvar Ivanovitch. He symbolises theever-predominant type of Russian, the sleepy, slothful Slav of to-day,yesterday, and to-morrow. He is the Slav whose inherent force Europe isas ignorant of as he is himself. Though he speaks only twenty sentencesin the book he is a creation of Tolstoian force. His very words aredark and of practically no significance. There lies the irony of theportrait. The last words of the novel, the most biting surely thatTurgenev ever wrote, contain the whole essence of On the Eve . On theEve of What? one asks. Time has given contradictory answers to the menof all partie