With her first book,
Tolstoy's Art and Thought, 1847-1880 (1993), Donna Tussing Orwin
established herself as one of the leading Western scholars and interpreters of
Russian nineteenth-century prose fiction. She displayed the talents of a
sensitive and discriminating literary critic, adept at uncovering and
explicating both the inner workings and the broader implications of the classic
Tolstoyan texts. The word "thought" in her title, however, calls attention to
yet another of her areas of competence. She is exceptionally well versed in
European intellectual history and philosophy and was able authoritatively to
assess Tolstoy as thinker as well as artist, situating him within the larger
stream of European thought in his time.
In her new book Orwin
has widened her grasp to take in, along with her beloved Tolstoy, the two other
major Russian novelists: Dostoevsky, about whom she has also written
extensively, and Turgenev, a newcomer to her stable, about whom she demonstrates
equal mastery. Orwin's basic idea is that the three Russian giants leaped ahead
of the European masters of their era, putting the fiction produced in this
backward and seemingly benighted country in the absolute first rank among
European literatures. Her thesis is that they did this by learning, partly from
one another, how to represent interiority, the subjective aspect of human
experience: not just what is said and done, but how it feels. Feeling, of
course, had always been the chief focus of lyric poetry, expressive of the
experiencing poet. But fiction involves the creation and representation of the
other, of non-self characters. Yet how can we know, really, deeply, know,
how someone else feels? Perhaps we can't; we only know ourselves. Orwin
therefore believes that the great Russians necessarily began with introspection,
self-scrutiny, later learning to project onto invented characters the knowledge
thus derived, disguising its source in various ways.
The pioneer in this
enterprise was Turgenev, the oldest of the three and the first to enter the
literary arena, but before we get to him Orwin takes us on a hurried excursion
among his predecessors, Karamzin, Pushkin and Lermontov. Orwin has shrewd things
to say about all of them, but one feels some disappointment at the extreme
brevity of her treatment. Turning quickly to Turgenev, Orwin first takes up the
topic, already adumbrated in the Pushkin excursus, of foreign models as
formative influences on characters, for instance the supposedly damaging
Anglophile upbringing of Lavretsky in Nest of Gentlefolk.[1]
Whatever the damage, it does not seem to me at all clear, or even implied by
Turgenev, that faulty education was responsible for Lavretsky's most ruinous
mistake, making an utterly inappropriate, indeed disastrous marriage. More
likely, something much more primitive, like lust, was responsible.
Dostoevsky was
likewise concerned with the loss of Russian identity to foreign models. The
clearest example is the Underground Man, whose crippling "heightened
self-consciousness" Orwin attributes at least partly to his "reading of Western
literature and philosophy." No doubt he was indeed led away from traditional
Russian values, especially religion, by his reading of Western radicals or of
the Russians who imitated them. But I can't help feeling, as I did about
Lavretsky, that his alienation, self-isolation, and sado-masochism have deeper
roots in his psyche than any areas reached by his readings. But he certainly is
a victim of reflektsiia, that dread disease already well exemplified in
Lermontov's Pechorin. (The cognate translation "reflection" needs a lot of
explanation, which Orwin duly provides, if it is to be used.) Reflektsiia
in its worst form involved obsessive inward contemplation so extreme that the
victim is unable to engage effectively with the world at all.
As Orwin correctly
observes, Tolstoy never entertained any notion that readings make the man. Quite
the opposite: for him books are knizhki, generally to be scorned in favor
of "life." But his characters do read, and Orwin deftly interprets the contrast
between the safely circumscribed lives of the characters in the English novel
Anna Karenina peruses on the train and her own more daring, even reckless
behavior.[2]
After a brief but
revealing discussion of transcendentalism among the Russians, Orwin returns to
take up each of her three heroes at greater length as pioneers of subjectivity.
The abstemious Turgenev, it turns out, goes only half way. Like his idol
Pushkin, he prefers to limit himself to external evidence of his characters'
mental states, avoiding views from the inside. Orwin illustrates this
observation with extended commentaries on a sampling of texts, among them
stories from Sportsman's Sketches.[3]
Turgenev's great achievement in this first major book, as Orwin notes, was
to create vivid images of concrete Russian characters, peasants as well as
gentry, based on real observation. True, the book had an immediate political
purpose, exposure of the evils of serfdom; but its images are so keenly observed
that, as Orwin notes, the book is "a work of art still read for pleasure and
profit today" (p. 39). Orwin's close readings are generally excellent, but I did
find myself dissenting from some of what she says about "My Neighbor Radilov."
She describes Radilov's estate as "run-down" and its kitchen garden "neglected";
yet somehow this neglected garden has produced a bumper crop of cucumbers and
pumpkins. An atmosphere of "sadness and decay" is said to prevail, but in fact,
as the hunter discovers afterwards, an intense love affair, neither sad nor
decaying, was in progress between Radilov and his sister-in-law. Appearances did
not match realities.
As for Dostoevsky,
Orwin thinks that he may have learned from Turgenev how to distance himself from
his characters, keeping the authorial presence carefully hidden. "Poor Folk,"
for example, is presented in the form of letters, an old illusionistic device
going back to Richardson, with the text itself thus given fictional reality, but
with the added bonus, for Dostoevsky, of appearing to absolve the author of any
responsibility for these documents. Each writer is allowed his or her
individuality. Nevertheless, the author remains present, even in a "polyphonic"
novel. Orwin skillfully shows how from the weaknesses and contradictions in both
Makar Devushkin's and Varvara Dobroselova's arguments we can deduce the author's
truth.
Orwin has interesting
observations on Dostoevsky's indebtedness to Vladimir Odoevsky, who served as a
conduit to Romantic philosophy, especially Schelling. Thus the disappearance of
any author's voice in Poor Folk is seen as part of Dostoevsky's
implementation of Schellingian irrationalist idealism, learned via Odoevsky. The
objectively perceived letters between Makar and Varya enable us readers to
sympathize fully with each character, while at the same time recognizing their
mistakes and limitations. We must, as Orwin vividly puts it, "keep thinking –
with the author—to the bitter end" (p. 55). This point seems to me successfully
demonstrated in her sensitive reading of the story. However, she goes on to
assert that "to create characters whose inner lives are even partially
accessible, he [the author] must infuse them with a distillation of his own
personal experience and personality" (p. 56). The statement may well be true,
but it does not seem to me to follow from what has gone before, which says
nothing at all about Dostoevsky's "personal experience and personality."
The claim that authors
base most of their revelations of characters' inner life on introspection would
be easier to demonstrate in the case of Tolstoy, but Orwin turns first to
another Tolstoyan topic, the author speaking directly to the reader in his own
voice. For this she evokes the story "Lucerne." Via its hero, Prince Dmitry
Nekhliudov (always an alter ego name in Tolstoy) the author can rant about the
heartlessness of Western civilization, demonstrated by the cold indifference of
British aristocrats to the playing of an itinerant Italian musician the prince
had befriended. But Orwin rightly shows that after this outburst Nekhliudov's
honesty takes him another, harder step, into self-awareness, to recognition that
the musician had never asked for his intervention and that he had used the
Italian for his own emotional needs. It is true, as Orwin notes, that Tolstoy
later disliked "Lucerne." Her explanation for the aversion, however ("He
recognized the contradiction between the intent of the closing diatribe and the
didactic role it plays in the drama," p. 59) seems to me contrived. It would
seem simpler to say that the sweeping generalizations were not justified by the
rather minor episode on which they were based, as was noted by contemporary
critics.
Orwin then proceeds to
an extended discussion of Tolstoy's indebtedness to Plato. She draws interesting
connections between Tolstoy's Platonic readings of the early 1850s and "The
Raid" (the nature of courage). She also elaborates on the direct echoes of
"Symposium" in Anna Karenina. She also sees in Tolstoy's modus operandi a
direct influence of Plato's dramatic dialogues, especially Tolstoy's insistence
on protecting "the contradictions and irrationality of human subjectivity from
reason's dissecting eye," even though he does generalize and appeal to reason
(p. 66). What is left of the principle after this qualification is not entirely
clear. Likewise somewhat unclear is Orwin's interpretation of Stiva Oblonsky as
a demonstration case of the totally self-sufficient, self-contented personality,
complete devoid of reflektsiia. In the opening scene, according to Orwin,
"the reader feels his [Stiva's] discomfort, his repentance, and his certainty
that what has happened is not his fault" (p. 67). But, one asks, what is he
repenting for if he does not feel himself at fault?
I was more persuaded
by Orwin's case for Tolstoy's early apprenticeship to Turgenev. For this she has
the authority of Tolstoy himself, who dedicated "The Woodcutting," his only
dedicated story, to the older writer, acknowledging that he found in it
"involuntary imitation" of Turgenev's narrative methods. Orwin wisely chooses to
focus on the impact of Sportsman's Sketches, which Tolstoy especially
admired, on "A Landlord's Morning" and "The Cossacks." But very soon the
differences between the two writers became manifest. Turgenev was deeply
committed to the belief that a writer of fiction may draw conclusions only from
what he has actually shown, not imposing on the text opinions arrived at
independently. Tolstoy made some effort to follow this advice, apparent in "A
Landowner's Morning," which won Turgenev's approval for its "almost total
freedom of viewpoint." But Tolstoy was not for long willing to impose such
clamps on his convictions and didactic purposes. Orwin's second example, "The
Cossacks," seemed to me to be treated too cursorily to establish the linkage she
postulates to Turgenev. However, quite apart from the Turgenev connection, Orwin
makes some very discerning observations about narrative technique in that story.
We now go back to
Turgenev for a whole chapter on his "romantic longing," designed to demonstrate
Orwin's thesis that "Russian psychological realism rests on certain romantic
philosophical premises" (p. 76). After briefly summarizing some of Turgenev's
early poems, where the romantic basis is open and clear, Orwin traces the
romantic longing through a series of characters in his later fiction, where the
ultimate "longing for the All" is reduced to desires of a more limited scope,
like Lavretsky's love for Liza in "Nest of Gentlefolk." She situates the Russian
philosophical yearning for wholeness within a tradition stretching from
Descartes to Kant and Schelling via Rousseau, specific Russian features being
partly an accident of the timing of the Russian entry into the European
philosophical stream. Actually trained in philosophy in Berlin, Turgenev was one
of its principal conduits. True, he later turned away from metaphysics, but
Orwin thinks that the influence of philosophy remains embedded in his later
writings.
We then return to
Sportsman's Sketches to demonstrate this development. Orwin is clearly
right in finding that Turgenev's romantic longing is manifest in his characters'
yearning for union with nature. She takes "Ermolai and the Miller's Wife" as her
specimen case. However, in my opinion she partly misreads the story. In my view
Ermolai and the miller's wife, Arina, act out together an eminently natural
sexual impulse. Orwin, however, disapproves, believing that there is something
"subhuman" in Ermolai (p. 81), who "casually takes sexual advantage of a woman
who is in a loveless marriage." But the thrust of the story is not Ermolai's
casual animality, but the cruelty of Arina's former owner, who refused to let
her marry the man she loved. The miller had bought her out of serfdom, perhaps
from sexual attraction, but also perhaps because she was literate and could be
useful. She had never loved him. Ermolai was an old friend. Perhaps her sexual
encounters with him were one of the bright spots in her sad, unfulfilled life.
The narrator's refusal to condemn Ermolai may signal his belief that Ermolai and
Arina were simply obeying the call of nature, against which human institutions
have erected too many barriers.
Orwin now moves to an
extended, very revealing analysis of the early short story "Andrei Kolosov." The
title character represents the "natural man," completely at ease with himself
and free of reflektsiia. He courts a young woman and then drops her quite
easily and without guilt: he just fell out of love, and that was that. But his
story is told by a much more complicated, tormented individual who then makes
the same identical moves as Kolosov, but remains full of self-doubt,
ambivalence, and remorse for his cowardice in jilting the woman without final
visit or explanation. Orwin leads us through all this with a sure step.
The next chapter takes
up Dostoevsky's response to Turgenev's story, which he admired, very
questionably seeing the author himself portrayed in the eponymous hero. At that
moment Turgenev seemed to Dostoevsky the very epitome of success in life: "a
poet, talented, an aristocrat, handsome, rich, intelligent, educated, 25 years
old." Dostoevsky was flattered and pleased by Turgenev's gestures of friendship,
with feelings analogous to those of the narrator of "Andrei Kolosov" toward the
title hero. As Orwin observes, it was "the beginning of a lifelong tangled
personal relationship […] in which love, hatred, and envy mingle" (p. 93).
In this early phase,
Orwin believes, both writers saw themselves as "sentimental poets afflicted with
romantic longing in the Schillerian sense" (p. 95). Turgenev, however, was
willing to allow reason a fundamental place in the human personality, and from
reason inevitably comes reflektsiia, the ability "to ponder our own
feelings" (p. 97). Orwin draws heavily on a review by Turgenev of a translation
of Faust, arguing that both Faust and Mephistopheles were derived from
Goethe's own personality, the former from his "passionate melancholy," the
latter from his capacity for cold "reflection" on his own emotions.
The problem that both
Turgenev and Dostoevsky agonize over, according to Orwin, is how we can enjoy
both freedom and love. She claims that Andrei Kolosov accomplishes this feat,
but of course in fact he does so only in succession, not at the same time. Her
assertion that Liza in Nest of Gentlefolk "achieves freedom" by becoming
a nun (and refusing to join Lavretsky in an extramarital relationship) is open
to question: what sort of freedom does she find in the convent?
Orwin next analyzes in
detail the actual appearance, in The Demons, of a Turgenev caricature,
Karmazinov. She traces this figure through the drafts, showing that the sketched
Great Writer only crystallized as Turgenev at quite a late stage, always
associated as a kind of double of Stepan Trofimovich, but more outspokenly a
Westernizer than he, a nihilist-atheist, Russophobe and Germanophile.
However—and this is Orwin's important contribution—she shows that however
hostile to Turgenev the man, Dostoevsky retained a deep, though not uncritical,
admiration for Turgenev the artist. In particular, Dostoevsky takes the image of
Bazarov, especially Bazarov as interpreted by Dmitry Pisarev, as one of the
ingredients in the characterization of Pyotr Verkhovensky, along with the all
too real Nechaev. However, Orwin's summary image of Pisarev's Bazarov seems to
me somewhat distorted ("a man who lived only for himself and for pleasure," p.
106). Bazarov, it seems to me, did indeed live a totally self-sufficient life,
but he was no hedonist. He was dedicated to scientific research and, Pisarev
adds, if the desired changes were to take place in the life of society, he would
be ready to assume a more active social role. This was to say, to translate from
words designed to escape the censor's blue pencil, that Bazarov was a potential
revolutionary. But to identify Pyotr Verkhovensky with Pisarev's Bazarov seems
to me a big stretch, though perhaps Dostoevsky was capable of it. The real
Nechaev would seem to be a more crucial ingredient of this characterization.
Perhaps more convincing is the possible linkage of Bazarov with Stavrogin, but,
as Orwin shrewdly adds, there is also a bizarre further admixture of Nozdryov
and Byron. The "Byronic branch" in particular renders him a tragic figure,
unlike Karmazinov, who is merely absurd.
Orwin adduces evidence
that Dostoevsky's conception of Turgenev as man and artist was deeply influenced
by an article by Nikolai Strakhov, who drew a sharp line between Turgenev the
"poet," who saw the world from a perspective far higher and more detached than
that of his characters, and Turgenev the craven author of the essay "Concerning
Fathers and Children," in which, in an effort to appease the radical
critics, he claimed that he sympathized with Bazarov in everything save his
views on art.[4]
Orwin's concluding sentences in
this chapter are so well formulated that I cannot resist quoting them in full
(p. 112):
Dostoevsky is
both more modern (in his radical psychology of the godless man) and more
traditional, even medieval (in his Christianity) than Turgenev. Turgenev
resembles the ancient writers in his stoicism toward a godless universe; but
this makes him modern too. In different ways, he and Dostoevsky are like the
Roman god Janus, who faces both the future and the past.
In
her next chapter Orwin focuses directly on reflektsiia, now
straightforwardly translated as "reflection" and given a respectable
philosophical ancestry. It is this reflection, and not external observation,
that is the source of the deep understanding of human nature that both writers,
and especially Dostoevsky, attained. Strakhov had perceived that "all his
[Dostoevsky's] characters are autobiographical" (p. 116). As her primary
evidence Orwin chooses Notes from the House of the Dead, where the
relation between autobiography and fiction is especially problematic. Dostoevsky
tells the story via a narrator, Goryanchikov, whose crime and mentality were
very different from his own; but he nevertheless conveys through him his own
deep feelings about the peasant convicts he had known in Siberia, just as
Turgenev's hunter had done with the peasant characters in Sportsman's
Sketches. Orwin traces in detail the stages in Goryanchikov's adjustment to
prison life and his evolving perception of his cell mates, primarily based on
his eventual recognition of the similarity between their sensations and his own.
She explores the contradiction between the perceptions of peasant criminals as
recorded in Notes from the House of the Dead and those Dostoevsky later
put forward as his own in his more politically slanted writings. In the earlier
text peasant ex-serfs feel no remorse at all for their crimes, especially crimes
committed against the ruling classes, a fact that makes any prospect of eventual
class reconciliation and harmony seem most unlikely. In later times, however,
Dostoevsky states categorically that peasants do repent their evil deeds.
In general, the exposition of Notes from the House of the Dead is one of
the best parts of this book, perhaps because Orwin gave herself enough space to
do a thorough job. Elsewhere she sometimes seems cramped.[5]
However, there remains a final paradox that seems to me unresolved. Dostoevsky,
Orwin asserts, does not assume that he can completely illuminate the inner life
of others. Despite all his insight into human souls, "the subjectivity of others
ultimately remains a mystery in his fiction" (p. 131). But what, one asks, if
those "others" are not real people, but characters the author invented? Why
can't he know at least them completely?
Orwin
concludes the chapter with an illuminating discussion of "confession" as a form
of self-revelation—its ambiguities and evasions, of course focusing especially
on Rousseau. She finds, convincingly, that all her three authors owed a great
deal to Rousseau "for insights into human consciousness and also for the
revelation of even its shameful secrets" (p. 138).
In
her next chapter Orwin turns to depiction of childhood, adding Dickens to her
roster of sources and eliminating Turgenev, who showed little interest in the
topic of childhood, though allegedly sharing his confreres' belief in "the
natural goodness of children.[6]
Orwin is no doubt right that Tolstoy believed children innocent and guiltless,
especially because they are still free from the demands of sexuality. But the
innocence is already under strain. As she shows later, even in Childhood
Nikolenka's grief for his dead mother is contaminated by feelings of vanity,
awareness that others are watching and admiring him. Emotions are seldom pure,
even in childhood. And Dostoevsky, as Orwin rightly points out, never believed
children, except very little ones, totally immune to the "breath of corruption."
Orwin
adduces many examples from both Dickens and Dostoevsky of children who manage to
remain untainted by evil, even when it is oppressively present in their
surroundings, such as Oliver Twist or Sonya Marmeladova. I found all her
examples convincing except one, Smerdyakov from The Karamazov Brothers,
who is said "to have been born innocent if not beautiful" (p. 145). How then did
he develop his penchant for hanging cats and his total immunity to all
Grigorii's moral teachings?
Orwin
then takes up Tolstoy's indebtedness to Dickens, showing in particular that the
semi-autobiographical trilogy was partly modeled on the semi-autobiographical
David Copperfield. However, her description of David's childhood as "happy,
healthy" (p. 145) seems to me wide of the mark. What about the trauma of his
widowed mother's marriage to Mr. Murdstone, Murdstone's attempt to flog David,
and his eventual escape to the rescuing arms of Aunt Betsy Trotwood? But her
assertion of David's psychological complexity as a model for Nikolenka's seems
well established. Orwin's account of the stages in Nikolenka's maturation
process is handled with sure perceptiveness, especially the "growing
self-consciousness that threatens sincerity" (p. 147), anticipating "the adult
drama of pride and vanity" (p. 148).
Orwin
now brings forward clear evidence of the direct influence of Tolstoy's trilogy
on The Insulted and Injured, which she follows with a detailed account,
full of insight, of various Dostoevskian children in that novel as well as in
"The Little Hero" and "Netochka Nezvanova." Her final example is Kolya Krasotkin
(misspelled Karasotkin, p, 157) in The Karamazov Brothers, who is "all
potential," wavering between the noxious influence of Rakitin and the benign one
of Alyosha. Orwin pairs him with Petya Rostov from War and Peace, about
whom she writes a very odd sentence: "…despite his mother's best efforts he
perishes at full gallop in the intoxication of battle" (p. 157). Was his mother
there, trying to cool his ardor?
Orwin's final chapter offers an extended discussion of the psychology of evil in
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, including a revealing analysis of the hidden interaction
between these two giants who never met face to face. Dostoevsky, as noted, was
much impressed by the trilogy and also by the war stories of the 1850s, with
their classification of soldiers' responses to danger and death. In
Adolescence Tolstoy writes of Nikolenka's fantasies of violence, of crimes
committed without murderous intent, out of "curiosity," a pattern Dostoevsky
later developed to the limit in Stavrogin. Dostoevsky had already encountered
among convicts in Siberia individuals who had committed their crimes on sudden
impulses of this kind. Orwin notes in both writers' psychological observations
the phenomenon of "desperation" (otchaiannost'), when all restraints are
cast away.[7]
Orwin finds many interesting parallels between the psychologies of Tolstoy's
soldiers and Dostoevsky's criminals, with Dostoevsky drawing insights from
Tolstoy.
Orwin
then shows that later the direction of influence was reversed, with Tolstoy
drawing heavily on Dostoevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead for his
representation of convict life in Resurrection. A Dostoevsky influence is
also discovered in "The Kreutzer Sonata,: whose hero, Pozdnyshev, felt himself
impelled by a "strange and vital force" to commit his monstrous deed. In such
individuals there is "a split between the contemplative and the active self" (p.
171), an observation that Orwin also connects with Tolstoy's readings of
Schopenhauer. Nevertheless, Pozdnyshev while committing his crime was at every
moment fully conscious of what he was doing, and he experienced flashes of
"reasonable consciousness" that might possibly have restrained him.
As
her final case history, Orwin returns to the figure of Stavrogin as depicted in
the suppressed chapter of The Demons, his confession. Her analysis of
this encounter is full of acute perceptions, too specific to summarize.
Especially striking is Dostoevsky's recognition of the "essential eroticism of
the soul" and beyond that, "a need to be part of the human community," which
perversely becomes Pyotr Verkhovensky's goal of a "universal tyranny" (p, 177).
In a
brief, but far-reaching Conclusion Orwin assesses the impact of the great
Russians on us, i.e., on Western consciousness and Western literature.
All her three authors, she maintains, though so different in many respects,
agree on the "radical incompleteness and consequent neediness" of the human
soul. The atheist Turgenev sees this as an inescapable part of the "tragic human
condition." We may, he says, find some consolation in the harmony and beauty of
nature, but nature is fundamentally indifferent (Pushkin's word, invoked
at the end of Fathers and Children) to us. For Dostoevsky and Tolstoy,
however, "part of the human soul is divine" (p. 182), and the individual must
forever struggle with the evil within himself. As Orwin sees it, in our post-Nietzschean
world pure subjectivity has come to be associated with amorality (p. 184). We
therefore turn to the nineteenth-century Russian authors "because they seem
moral without naiveté or hypocrisy." For us "Russian novels are still revealing
the consequences of consciousness in unexpected ways" (p. 185). We can learn a
great deal about how this is accomplished in Donna Orwin's fine book.
Hugh McLean
University of California, Berkeley
TSQ 34
Toronto Slavic Annual 2003
Arkadii Shteinvberg. The second way
Roman Timenchik. Anna Akhmatova in 60s
Le Studio Franco-Russe
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