268
literary types usually go. Unlike Onegin and Pechorin, he had
been through a period of idealization and sympathetic,
adoration. At the very moment the
new
m~ln--~iaz;al
''"'-:.till'"''''
the author took up a critical, objective attitude towards
him.
confused many people and-who knows?-that was, if not a .
an injustice. The Bazarov type had at least as much right
to
idealized as the literary types that preceded it. I have just
said
the author's attitude towards the character he had created
the reader: the reader always feels
ill
at ease, he is easily
LJr:'IYIlU.1:II
and even aggrieved if an author treats his imaginary character
a living person, that is to say, if he sees and displays his good as
as his bad sides, and, above all, if he does not show
.
signs of sympathy or antipathy with his own child. The reader
like getting angry: he is asked not to follow a well-beaten path,
to pave his own path. "Why should I take the trouble?" he can't
thinking. "Books exist for entertainment and not for racking
brains. And, besides, would it have been too much to ask the
to tell me what to think of such and such a character or what
thinks of him himself?" But it is even worse if the author's
towards that character is itself rather vague and undefined,
if
author himself does not know whether or not he loves the
he has created (as it happened to me in my attitude towards
for "the involuntary attraction" I mentioned in my diary is not
The reader is ready to ascribe to the author all sorts of
IlUIl-rA'''''''
sympathies or antipathies, provided he can escape from the
of unpleasant "vagueness."
"Neither fathers nor sons," said a witty lady to me after
my book, "that should be the real title of your novel and-you
yourself a nihilist." A similar view was expressed with even
force on the publication of
Smoke.
I am afraid I do not feel
raising objections: perhaps, that lady was right. In the business
fiction writing everyone (I am judging by myself) does what he
and not what he wants, and-as much as he can. I suppose that
work of fiction has to be judged
en gros
and while insisting on
scientiousness on the part of the author, the other
sides
of
his
must be regarded, I would not say, with indifference, but with
ness. And, much as I should like to please my critics, I cannot
guilty to any absence of conscientiousness on my part.
