Rudin

I have been undergoing a change in viewpoint with respect to Turgenev.  I love Dostoevsky's novels - powerful, compelling, and full of passionate beliefs and actions.  And I know that Dostoevsky despised Turgenev, believing he had lost his roots in the Russian soil and people, and had become infatuated with Western culture - probably the greatest sin a Russian writer could commit in Dostoevsky's eyes.  Dostoevsky drew a wickedly funny, vitriolic parody of Turgenev in The Possessed.  But I really enjoyed Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, and Turgenev is portrayed as charming and shrewd in Stoppard's Coast of Utopia plays.

Well, like Fathers and Sons, Rudin is lyrical, thoughtful and, finally, sad, though leavened with a little uplifting sentiment.  Like the nihilist Bazarov in Fathers and Sons, Rudin also represents a kind of Russian type - in this case, a lofty intellectual who cannot transform his dreams into action.  When young, he is handsome, articulate and inspiring, attracting the interest and sympathy, particularly, of women.  But he is incapable of realizing his idealistic goals and, ultimately, fails those who placed trust in him.

"You have so often talked of self-sacrifice," she broke in, "but do you know, if you had said to me to-day at once, "I love you, but I cannot marry you, I will not answer for the future, give me your hand and come with me" - do you know, I would have come with you; do you know, I would have risked everything?  But there's all the difference between word and deed, and you were afraid now, just as you were afraid the day before yesterday at dinner of Volintsev."

and

"But up to this time I believed in you, believed in every word you said....For the future, pray keep a watch on your words, do not fling them about at hazard."

This is all terribly sad, but Rudin is redeemed somewhat at the end by an unlikely defender, Lezhnyov, who says:

But as for character, that's just his misfortune, that there's no character in him....But that's not the point.  I want to speak of what is good, of what is rare in him.  He has enthusiasm; and believe me, who am a phlegmatic person enough, that is the most precious quality in our times.  We have all become insufferably reasonable, indifferent, and slothful; we are asleep and cold, and thanks to any one who will wake us up and warm us!  It is high time!  Do you remember, Sasha, once when I was talking to you about him, I blamed him for coldness?  I was right, and wrong too, then.  The coldness is in his blood - that is not his fault - and not in his head.  He is not an actor, as I called him, or a cheat, nor a scoundrel; he lives at other people's expense, not like a swindler, but like a child....Yes; no doubt he will die somewhere in poverty and want; but are we to throw stones at him for that?  He never does anything himself precisely, he has no vital force, no blood; but who has the right to say that he has not been of use?  that his words have not scattered good seeds in young hearts, to whom nature has not denied, as she has to him, powers for action and the faculty of carrying out their own ideas?  Indeed, I myself, to begin with, have gained all that from him..."

I really enjoyed this book and recommend it highly.