The Jew and Other Stories Ivan Turgenev Translated by Constance Garnett THE JEW AND OTHER STORIES BY IVAN TURGENEV Translated from the Russian By CONSTANCE GARNETT TO THE MEMORY OF STEPNIAK WHOSE LOVE OF TURGENEV SUGGESTED THIS TRANSLATION INTRODUCTION In studying the Russian novel it is amusing to note the childish attitude of certain English men of letters to the novel in general, their depreciation of its influence and of the public’s ‘inordinate’ love of fiction. Many men of letters to-day look on the novel as a mere story- book, as a series of light-coloured, amusing pictures for their ‘idle hours,’ and on memoirs, biographies, histories, criticism, and poetry as the age’s serious contribution to literature. Whereas the reverse is the case. The most serious and significant of all literary forms the modern world has evolved is the novel; and brought to its highest development, the novel shares with poetry to-day the honour of being the supreme instrument of the great artist’s literary skill. To survey the field of the novel as a mere pleasure-garden marked out for the crowd’s diversion—a field of recreation adorned here and there by the masterpieces of a few great men—argues in the modern critic either an academical attitude to literature and life, or a one- eyed obtuseness, or merely the usual insensitive taste. The drama in all but two countries has been willy-nilly abandoned by artists as a coarse playground for the great public’s romps and frolics, but the novel can be preserved exactly so long as the critics understand that to exercise a delicate art is the one serious duty of the artistic life. It is no more an argument against the vital significance of the novel that tens of thousands of people—that everybody, in fact—should to-day essay that form of art, than it is an argument against poetry that for all the centuries droves and flocks of versifiers and scribblers and rhymesters have succeeded in making the name of poet a little foolish in worldly eyes. The true function of poetry! That can only be vindicated in common opinion by the severity and enthusiasm of critics in stripping bare the false, and in hailing as the true all that is animated by the living breath of beauty. The true function of the novel! That can only be supported by those who understand that the adequate representation and criticism of human life would be impossible for modern men were the novel to go the way of the drama, and be abandoned to the mass of vulgar standards. That the novel is the most insidious means of mirroring human society Cervantes in his great classic revealed to seventeenth-century Europe. Richardson and Fielding and Sterne in their turn, as great realists and impressionists, proved to the eighteenth century that the novel is as flexible as life itself. And from their days to the days of Henry James the form of the novel has been adapted by European genius to the exact needs, outlook, and attitude to life of each successive generation. To the French, especially to Flaubert and Maupassant, must be given the credit of so perfecting the novel’s technique that it has become the great means of cosmopolitan culture. It was, however, reserved for the youngest of European literatures, for the Russian school, to raise the novel to being the absolute and triumphant expression by the national genius of the national soul. Turgenev’s place in modern European literature is best defined by saying that while he stands as a great classic in the ranks of the great novelists, along with Richardson, Fielding, Scott, Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray, Meredith, Tolstoi, Flaubert, Maupassant, he is the greatest of them all, in the sense that he is the supreme artist. As has been recognised by the best French critics, Turgenev’s art is both wider in its range and more beautiful in its form than the work of any modern European artist. The novel modelled by Turgenev’s hands, the Russian novel, became the great modern instrument for showing ‘the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.’ To reproduce human life in all its subtlety as it moves and breathes before us, and at the same time to assess its values by the great poetic insight that reveals man’s relations to the universe around him,—that is an art only transcended by Shakespeare’s own in its unique creation of a universe of great human types. And, comparing Turgenev with the European masters, we see that if he has made the novel both more delicate and more powerful than their example shows it, it is because as the supreme artist he filled it with the breath of poetry where others in general spoke the word of prose. Turgenev’s horizon always broadens before our eyes: where Fielding and Richardson speak for the country and the town, Turgenev speaks for the nation. While Balzac makes defile before us an endless stream of human figures, Turgenev’s characters reveal themselves as wider apart in the range of their spirit, as more mysteriously alive in their inevitable essence, than do Meredith’s or Flaubert’s, than do Thackeray’s or Maupassant’s. Where Tolstoi uses an immense canvas in War and Peace, wherein Europe may see the march of a whole generation, Turgenev in Fathers and Children concentrates in the few words of a single character, Bazarov, the essence of modern science’s attitude to life, that scientific spirit which has transformed both European life and thought. It is, however, superfluous to draw further parallels between Turgenev and his great rivals. In England alone, perhaps, is it necessary to say to the young novelist that the novel can become anything, can be anything, according to the hands that use it. In its application to life, its future development can by no means be gauged. It is the most complex of all literary instruments, the chief method to-day of analysing the complexities of modern life. If you love your art, if you would exalt it, treat it absolutely seriously. If you would study it in its highest form, the form the greatest artist of our time has perfected—remember Turgenev. EDWARD GARNETT. November 1899. CONTENTS THE JEW AN UNHAPPY GIRL THE DUELLIST THREE PORTRAITS ENOUGH [...]... inexperienced are The matter, of which you to me reported have, is important, very important And where is this man who taken was? this Jew? where is he?’ I went out and told them to bring in the Jew They brought in the Jew The wretched creature could scarcely stand up ‘Yes,’ pronounced the general, turning to me; and where’s the plan which on this man found was?’ I handed him the paper The general opened... 18 The Jew and Other Stories commiseration At the sight of the rope the Jew flung up his arms, sat down, and burst into sobs The soldiers stood silently about him, and stared grimly at the earth I went up to Girshel, addressed him; he sobbed like a baby, and did not even look at me With a hopeless gesture I went to my tent, flung myself on a rug, and closed my eyes Suddenly some one ran hastily and. .. I was taken to the hospital, and by the time I was well again, Dantzig had surrendered, and I joined my regiment on the banks of the Rhine 23 The Jew and Other Stories AN UNHAPPY GIRL Yes, yes, began Piotr Gavrilovitch; those were painful days and I would rather not recall them But I have made you a promise; I shall have to tell you the whole story Listen I I was living at that time (the winter of... face, and he frowned and turned away, while the canaries in the dining-room chirped their hardest, exasperated by the hissing of the smouldering mint I was fatherless and motherless, and my aunt spoiled me She placed the whole of the ground floor at my complete disposal My rooms were furnished very elegantly, not at all like a student’s rooms in fact: there were pink curtains in the bedroom, and a... that’s the thing, that’s the thing!’ I did not speak; I gazed at the Jew ‘Well, all right then; well then, very good; so I’ll show you then ’ Thereupon Girshel laughed and slapped me lightly on the shoulder, but skipped back at once as though he had been scalded ‘But, your honour, how about a trifle in advance?’ ‘But you ‘re taking me in, and will show me some scarecrow?’ 3 The Jew and Other Stories. .. motioned the soldiers to the Jew ‘quickly.’ Siliavka went up to the Jew ‘Fiodor Karlitch,’ I said to the adjutant (five soldiers had come with him); ‘tell them, at least, to take away that poor girl ’ 21 The Jew and Other Stories ‘Of course Certainly.’ The unhappy girl was scarcely conscious Girshel was muttering something to her in Yiddish The soldiers with difficulty freed Sara from her father’s arms, and. .. I’ll give, your Excellency! ’ (They dragged him to the birchtree.) ‘Spare me! have mercy! your honour the quarter-lieutenant! your Excellency, the general and commander-in-chief!’ They put the noose on the Jew I shut my eyes and rushed away I remained for a fortnight under arrest I was told that the widow of the luckless Girshel came to fetch away the clothes of the deceased The general ordered a hundred... spurs to my horse and galloped up In the yard of the little house an ugly and tattered Jewess was trying to tear out of the hands of my long sergeant, Siliavka, three hens and a duck He was holding his booty above his head, laughing; the hens clucked and the duck quacked Two other cuirassiers were loading their horses with hay, straw, and sacks of flour Inside the house I heard shouts and oaths in Little-Russian... Exhausted and sleepy, I came out into the fresh air, and sat down on a mound It was a splendid, 1 The Jew and Other Stories calm morning; the long lines of our fortifications were lost in the mist; I gazed till I was weary, and then began to doze where I was sitting A discreet cough waked me: I opened my eyes, and saw standing before me a Jew, a man of forty, wearing a long-skirted grey wrapper, slippers, and. .. from the enemy, my good man ’ ‘Not I not I ’ whispered the distracted Jew ‘You have the enemy with similar information before provided? Confess ’ ‘How could I?’ ‘You will not deceive me, my good man Are you a spy?’ 16 The Jew and Other Stories The Jew closed his eyes, shook his head, and lifted the skirts of his gown ‘Hang him,’ the general pronounced expressively after a brief silence,’according to the . The Jew and Other Stories Ivan Turgenev Translated by Constance Garnett THE JEW AND OTHER STORIES BY IVAN TURGENEV. splendid, The Jew and Other Stories 2 calm morning; the long lines of our fortifications were lost in the mist; I gazed till I was weary, and then began