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times he is pla inl y wrong: "TolsLOy was a t thi s time ( 1856) an awkward
and slovenl y writer" -thi s after
Ch ildhood, Boy hood,
a nd
Th e Sevas–
topol Sketch es!
The yield of insight is no t much ri cher th an the reto ld
biograph y.
And yet, the fault may be Turgenev's. Perhaps there a re no mo re
sparks to be struck from hi s wo rk by the modern cr iti cal mind . So
much of wha t he has seen and told is there on the surface, to be had fo r
the ta king. With no tas te fo r theology or metaph ys ics, demiurges or
apocalypses, thi s clear, sensible " rea list" was above a ll a n o bserver, as
Pritchell emphasizes, who wanted to show Russ ians to themselves as
they rea ll y were. We tend to see T urgenev as fini shin g las t in two
literary competitions- with hi s grea t Ru ss ian contem pora ri es, and
with hi s Paris fri ends, Flaubert and J ames, th e pani san s of " the well –
made novel. " Pritchell 's unrewa rdin g survey of hi s achi evement mi ght
persuade us LO remove him fo rever from th ese unfa ir contes ts he can
never win , and see him as one of the bes t nineteenth -century writers of
the second rank. The eye was as good as an y, the craft meti cul ous, the
language graceful and express ive, but hi s limited reach of mind and
power of invention-shortcomings Pritchell acknow ledges expli citl y
or implicitl y- confine him too often to the merely socia l scene.
Beyond, fo r him, li es biologica l exi stence- above a ll the mys tery of
aging and dying-but na ture has no mo re secrets to g ive up.
Fath ers
and Sons
mi ght well appea r on an yone's list of di sting ui shed novels;
some of his sto ries and ta les- " Bezhin Meadow," fo r exampl e-belong
in all serious anthologies o f sha n prose fo rms. T oo modes t, too
civilized-the gentl est of ba rba ri ans-he canno t endure compa ri son
with hi s arrogant, vi sionary, bea r-like compa tri o ts Tolstoy and Dosto–
evsky. The common reader may turn to him-as to Maupassa l1l,
Wharton , o r E.M. Forster-confident of a seri o us experi ence, but the
deep-reading criti c or schola r may be prepa red to g ive him up to the
histori ans of culture who will study him as a European sensibility,
close to the center of everything- as Russ ia's litera ry ambassado r to the
Wes t, as a primary developer of Ru ssian prose fo rms, and as an
incomparably subtl e o bserver of the Russ ian socia l, intellectua l, and
mora l scene.
In
one sill y sentence, Pritchell a llributes the affinit y between
Viardot and Turgenev to a shared "atavi sm ": Her " Spani shness h ad its
Islami c roots; his own, remo te though they mi ght be, had something of
this too." This talk of Islami c vibra ti ons is less interes tin g as a lapse
from sense than as an involuntary signa l of the pl ace th e book was
meant to have on a scale of seri o usness, as the publishers defined it. No
