Essays on Russian Novelists by William Lyon Phelps
page 74 of 210 (35%)
page 74 of 210 (35%)
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principal characters. And with what wonderful skill the author solves
this puzzling problem--to place in narrow, limited frames the broadest and newest themes (CONTENT). Hardly one of the novelists of our age, beginning with Dickens and ending with George Sand and Spielhagen, has succeeded in doing it so compactly and tersely, with such an absence of the DIDATIC element which is almost always present in the works of the above-mentioned authors, the now kings of western literatures, with such a full insight into the very heart of the life movement which is reflected in the novel. I repeat again, "Fathers and Children" is thought of highly by European critics, but years will pass and it will be thought of even more highly. It will be placed in a line with those weighty literary creations in which is reflected the basic movement of the time which created it." It would have been well for Turgenev if he could have preserved an absolute silence under the terrific storm of abuse that his most powerful novel brought down on his head; it would have been well to let the book speak for itself, and trust to time to make the strong wine sweet. But this was asking almost too much of human nature. Stung by the outrageous attacks of the Radicals, and suffering as only a great artist can suffer under what he regards as a complete misrepresentation of his purpose, Turgenev wrote letters of explanation, confession, irony, letters that gained him no affection, that only increased the perplexity of the public, and which are much harder to understand than the work itself. The prime difficulty was that in this book Turgenev had told a number of profound truths about life; and nobody wanted the truth. The eternal quarrel between the old and the young generation, the eternal quarrel between conservative and liberal, was at that time in Russia in an acute stage; and everybody read "Fathers and Children" with a view to increasing their |
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