the troubled waters of his story moves the brooding spirit of
creation. Russians must and will learn manhood from foreigners, from
men who die only from bodily disease, who are not sicklied o'er with
the pale cast of thought. At the very close of the book, one man asks
another, "Will there ever be men among us?" And the other "flourished
his fingers and fixed his enigmatical stare into the far distance."
Perhaps Turgenev meant that salvation would eventually come through a
woman--through women like Elena. For since her appearance, many are
the Russian women who have given their lives for their country.*

* See an article in the "Forum" for August, 1910.

The best-known novel of Turgenev, and with the possible exception of
"A House of Gentlefolk," his masterpiece, is "Fathers and Children,"
which perhaps he intended to indicate the real dawn suggested by "On
the Eve." The terrific uproar caused in Russia by this book has not
yet entirely ceased. Russian critics are, as a rule, very bad judges
of Russian literature. Shut off from participation in free, public,
parliamentary political debate, the Russians of 1860 and of to-day are
almost certain to judge the literary value of a work by what they
regard as its political and social tendency. Political bias is
absolutely blinding in an attempt to estimate the significance of any
book by Turgenev; for although be took the deepest interest in the
struggles of his unfortunate country, he was, from the beginning to
the end of his career, simply a supreme artist. He saw life clearly in
its various manifestations, and described it as he saw it, from the
calm and lonely vantage-ground of genius. Naturally he was both
claimed and despised by both parties. Here are some examples from
contemporary Russian criticism* (1862):--