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Fate and Fantasy: A Study of Turgenev's Fantastic Stories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Eva Kagan-Kans
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Extract

I ot sudeb zashchity net.

Pushkin, “Tsygany”

Turgenev's acceptance of a fate that governs human existence found expression in the use of the supernatural in certain of his stories. In the past most critics tended to turn away from these stories, in distress at not being able to reconcile this trait with their interpretation of Turgenev the realist, who portrayed the Russian social byt of the nineteenth century. And yet, a total of ten stories (almost a third of his total output of stories) in which there is a touch of the supernatural and the irrational cannot be dismissed as mere caprice.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 1969 , pp. 543 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1969

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References

1. “Faust,” “Rasskaz ottsa Alekseia,” “Son,” “Sobaka,” “Stuk, stuk, stuk,” “Prizraki,” “Neschastnaia,” “Strannaia istoriia,” “Pesn1 torzhestvuiushchei liubvi,” “Klara Milich.”

2. Turgenev to S. T. Aksakov, Feb. 2 (14), 1852, in Turgenev, I. S., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem, 28 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad, 1960-68)Google Scholar, Pis'ma, 2: 44. In this edition the volumes containing Turgenev's works are numbered separately from those containing his letters. Hereafter the works are cited in text and footnotes simply by volume and page numbers. Letters are cited as Pis'ma with volume and page numbers.

3. “Neschastnaia,” 10: 104. Also, “U Kati slovno na rodu bylo napisano, chto ona budet neschastna” (“Klara Milich,” 13: 114).

4. “Der Mensch ist nicht geboren frei zu sein” (Goethe, “Tasso,” 1. 930). Turgenev quotes this in a letter to P. Viardot, July 8 (20), 1848, Pis'ma, 1: 343.

5. “Strogo i bezuchastno vedet kazhdogo iz nas sud'ba” (“Dovol'no,” 9: 117).

6. “Faust,” 8: 44. See “Asia,” “Pervaia liubov',” “Prizraki,” Dym, “Neschastnaia,” “Veshnie vody,” “Pesn1 torzhestvuiushchei liubvi,” “Klara Milich.” Often this is described as a whirlwind, a storm that envelops the victim.

7. Turgenev to E. Lambert, June 10 (22), 1865, Pis'ma, 2: 364.

8. Turgenev quotes this several times. Cf. “Faust,” Dym, and “Molitva” (in Poems in Prose).

9. Andreevsky, S. A., “Turgenev,” in O Turgeneve, Ritsskaia i inostrannaia kritika, ed. Pertsov, P. P. (Moscow, 1918), p. 90–91.Google Scholar

10. Turgenev to Mme. Lambert, Mar. 2 (14), 1862, Pis'ma, 2: 349

11. Cf. S. Orlovsky (S. N. Shil’), “O religioznykh iskaniiakh Turgeneva,” in O Turgeneve, Russkaia i inostrannaia kritika.

12. Turgenev to Herzen, Apr. 16 (28), 1862, Pis'ma, 4: 383.

13. S. T. Aksakov to his son Ivan S. Aksakov, Dec. 29, 1849, quoted in Brodsky, N. L., I.S. Turgenev i russkie sektanty, “Nikitinskie subbotniki” (Moscow, 1922), p. 44.Google Scholar

14. Turgenev even employs tautology—“Nemaia tishina“—to deepen the effect. Zhirmunsky, V., in Nemetskii romantizm i sovremennaia mistika (St. Petersburg, 1914), p. 107 Google Scholar, points out that the inexpressible, ineffable quality of mysticism naturally leads the German Romantic writers to use adjectives such as “unsäglich,” “unaussprächlich.”

15. There is the same shade of anxiety in “Pervaia liubov',” 9: 28: “la leg, no dazhe glaz ne zakryl…. Pereplet ego chutko otdelialsia ot tainstvenno i smutno belevshikh sten. Groza podumal ia.” An even more anguished mood is evident in “Prizraki,” 9: 80.

16. In “Stuk, stuk, stuk” Teglev hears the mysterious voice calling him: “V etom bylo chto-to zhalobnoe i tainstvennoe.”

17. For example, “Son” and “Klara Milich.”

18. Vietor, K., Goethe the Poet (Cambridge, Mass., 1949), p. 185 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also Koyré, A., in Études sur I'histoire de la pensée philosophique en Russie (Paris, 1950), p. 15 Google Scholar, describes the great interest of Romantic circles in the “Nachtseite” of the life of the spirit. Kerner, Schubert, and Baader devoted studies to this and sought in the phenomenon of sleep, of animal magnetism, or hypnotic sleep the key or the image of the metaphysical knowledge of transcendental reality.

19. Brown, E. J., Stankevich and His Moscow Circle, 1830-1840 (Stanford, 1966), p. 54.Google Scholar

20. Quoted in Gorbacheva, , Molodye gody Turgeneva (Moscow, 1926), p. 10.Google Scholar Of course, Turgenev was closely associated with both Stankevich and Bakunin.

21. Pumpiansky, L. V., “Gruppa tainstvennykh povestei,” I.S. Turgenev, ed. Khalabaev, K. and Eikhenbaum, Boris, 12 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad, 1928-34), 7: 18.Google Scholar

22. “Morella,” in Poe, Edgar Allan, The Tales of Poe, New Library Edition (New York, 1902), p. 36.Google Scholar

23. Cf. Flaubert's “La Légende de Saint Julien l'hospitalier.”

24. Tieck, L, “Leben und Tod der heiligen Genoveva,” in Dramen der Frührotnantik: Reihe Romantik, ed. Kluckhohn, Paul (Leipzig, 1936), 8: 171.Google Scholar

25. “Son,” 11: 278. Compare with “Pesn’ torzhestvuiushchei liubvi,” p. 60. “Okon net nigde; dver1 zaveshennaia barkhatnym pologom, bezmolvno cherneet vo vpadine steny. I vdrug etot polog tikhon'ko skol'zit, otodvigaetsia … i vkhodit Mutsii. On klaniaetsia, raskryvaet ob'iatiia, smeetsia… . Ego zhestokie ruki obvivaiut stan Valerii; ego sukhie guby obzhigaiut ee vsiu… . Ona padaet navznich, na podushki… .”

26. Beguin, A., L'Ame romantique et le rêve (Paris, 1946).Google Scholar

27. Either the mother sees the father when the son is not present, or the son sees the corpse of the baron, but when the mother comes the body has disappeared.

28. Turgenev to M. V. Avdeev, Jan. 13 (25), 1870, Pis'ma, 8: 172.

29. Turgenev to P. Annenkov, Mar. 9 (21), 1857, Pis'ma, 3: 109-19. Also Turgenev to E. A. Cherkasskaia, Mar. 13 (25), 1858, Pis'ma, 3: 204-5.

30. Hoffmann, E. T. A., E. T. A. Hoffmanns Werke, ed. Ellinger, Georg (Leipzig, 1912), 3: 252.Google Scholar

31. Hoffmann, E. T. A., Poetische Werke (Berlin, 1957), 1: 202.Google Scholar

32. The hero of “Faust” sees a vision of Vera; Vera, herself, sees her mother's ghost. In “Neschastnaia,” Peter Gavrilovich sees the figure of Susanna in his room at the moment of her death. Aratov is visited by Klara's ghost after her death. “la ne boius’ skazochnogo elementa v romane.” Turgenev to P. V. Annenkov, Apr. 21 (May 2), 1853, Pis'ma, 2: 144.

33. 8: 49. It is interesting to see how this echoes Schiller: “Doch wie gerieten wir, die nichts verschuldet, / In diesen Kreis des Unglücks and Verbrechens? / Wem brachen wir die Treue? Warum muss Der Vater / Doppelschuld and Freveltat Uns grässlich wie ein / Schlangenpaar umwinden? Warum der Vater unversohnter Hass / Auch uns, die Liebenden, Zerreissend scheiden?” (“Wallensteins Tod,” act 3, sc. 18, lines 2130-41).

34. Quoted in Zhirmunsky, p. 86.

35. “Kaiser Octavianus,” in Tieck, L., Schriften (Berlin, 1828), p. 398 Google Scholar

36. For example, in “Neschastnaia” the narrator sees Susanna's ghost, but Fustov does not.

37. Nikitenko, A. V., Dnevnik, 3 vols. (Leningrad, 1955-56), 1: 338.Google Scholar

38. In “Prizraki” the narrator also drinks a bottle of wine before going to his first rendezvous with Ellis. Even in “Pesn’ torzhestvuiushchei liubvi” Valeriia drinks a glass of a very strong, pungent wine before her dream-vision.

39. “Klara Milich,” 13: 121. The lock of Klara's hair found clenched in Aratov's fist after his death may actually have been found by him lying between the leaves of her diary.