Virgin Soil (Russian: Новь Nov) by Ivan Turgenev. Full text translated in English, Virgin Soil (1877), a novel by Ivan Turgenev, Russian: Иван Сергеевич Тургенев

 

Turgenev, by Vasily Perov, 1872

Virgin Soil (Russian: Новь Nov), a novel by Ivan Turgenev (1877).

VIRGIN SOIL

By Ivan S. Turgenev

Translated from the Russian by R. S. Townsend

INTRODUCTION

TURGENEV was the first writer who was able, having both Slavic and

universal imagination enough for it, to interpret modern Russia to the

outer world, and Virgin Soil was the last word of his greater testament.

It was the book in which many English readers were destined to make

his acquaintance about a generation ago, and the effect of it was, like

Swinburne's Songs Before Sunrise, Mazzini's Duties of Man, and other

congenial documents, to break up the insular confines in which they had

been reared and to enlarge their new horizon. Afterwards they went on to

read Tolstoi, and Turgenev's powerful and antipathetic fellow-novelist,

Dostoievsky, and many other Russian writers: but as he was the

greatest artist of them all, his individual revelation of his country's

predicament did not lose its effect. Writing in prose he achieved a

style of his own which went as near poetry as narrative prose can do.

without using the wrong music: while over his realism or his irony he

cast a tinge of that mixed modern and oriental fantasy which belonged

to his temperament. He suffered in youth, and suffered badly, from the

romantic malady of his century, and that other malady of Russia, both

expressed in what M. Haumand terms his "Hamletisme." But in Virgin Soil

he is easy and almost negligent master of his instrument, and though he

is an exile and at times a sharply embittered one, he gathers experience

round his theme as only the artist can who has enriched leis art

by having outlived his youth without forgetting its pangs, joys,

mortifications, and love-songs.

In Nejdanov it is another picture of that youth which we see--youth

reduced to ineffectiveness by fatalism and by the egoism of the lyric

nature which longs to gain dramatic freedom, but cannot achieve it.

It is one of a series of portraits, wonderfully traced psychological

studies of the Russian dreamers and incompatibles of last mid-century,

of which the most moving figure is the hero of the earlier novel,

Dimitri Rudin. If we cared to follow Turgenev strictly in his growth

and contemporary relations, we ought to begin with his Sportsman's Note

Book. But so far as his novels go, he is the last writer to be taken

chronologically. He was old enough in youth to understand old age in the

forest, and young enough in age to provide his youth with fresh hues for

another incarnation. Another element of his work which is very finely

revealed and brought to a rare point of characterisation in Virgin Soil,

is the prophetic intention he had of the woman's part in the new order.

For the real hero of the tale, as Mr. Edward Garnett has pointed out in

an essay on Turgenev, is not Nejdanov and not Solomin; the part is cast

in the woman's figure of Mariana who broke the silence of "anonymous

Russia." Ivan Turgenev had the understanding that goes beneath the old

delimitation of the novelist hide-bound by the law--"male and female

created he them."

He had the same extreme susceptibility to the moods of nature. He

loved her first for herself, and then with a sense of those inherited

primitive associations with her scenes and hid influences which still

play upon us to-day; and nothing could be surer than the wilder or tamer

glimpses which are seen in this book and in its landscape settings of

the characters. But Russ as he is, he never lets his scenery hide his

people: he only uses it to enhance them. He is too great an artist to

lose a human trait, as we see even in a grotesque vignette like that of

Fomishka and Fimishka, or a chance picture like that of the Irish girl

once seen by Solomin in London.

Turgenev was born at Orel, son of a cavalry colonel, in ISIS. He died in

exile, like his early master in romance Heine--that is in Paris-on the

4th of September, 1883. But at his own wish his remains were carried

home and buried in the Volkoff Cemetery, St. Petersburg. The grey

crow he had once seen in foreign fields and addressed in a fit of

homesickness.

"Crow, crow, You are grizzled, I know, But from Russia you come; Ah me,

there lies home!" called him back to his mother country, whose true son

he remained despite all he suffered at her hands, and all the delicate

revenges of the artistic prodigal that he was tempted to take.

E. R.

VIRGIN SOIL

"To turn over virgin soil it is necessary to use a deep

plough going well into the earth, not a surface plough

gliding lightly over the top."--From a Farmer's Notebook.

I

AT one o'clock in the afternoon of a spring day in the year 1868, a

young man of twenty-seven, carelessly and shabbily dressed, was toiling

up the back staircase of a five-storied house on Officers Street in

St. Petersburg. Noisily shuffling his down-trodden goloshes and slowly

swinging his heavy, clumsy figure, the man at last reached the very top

flight and stopped before a half-open door hanging off its hinges. He

did not ring the bell, but gave a loud sigh and walked straight into a

small, dark passage.

"Is Nejdanov at home?" he called out in a deep, loud voice.

"No, he's not. I'm here. Come in," an equally coarse woman's voice

responded from the adjoining room.

"Is that Mashurina?" asked the newcomer.

"Yes, it is I. Are you Ostrodumov?

"Pemien Ostrodumov," he replied, carefully removing his goloshes, and

hanging his shabby coat on a nail, he went into the room from whence

issued the woman's voice.

It was a narrow, untidy room, with dull green coloured walls, badly

lighted by two dusty windows. The furnishings consisted of an iron

bedstead standing in a corner, a table in the middle, several chairs,

and a bookcase piled up with books. At the table sat a woman of about

thirty. She was bareheaded, clad in a black stuff dress, and was smoking

a cigarette. On catching sight of Ostrodumov she extended her broad, red

hand without a word. He shook it, also without saying anything, dropped

into a chair and pulled a half-broken cigar out of a side pocket.

Mashurina gave him a light, and without exchanging a single word, or so

much as looking at one another, they began sending out long, blue puffs

into the stuffy room, already filled with smoke.

There was something similar about these two smokers, although their

features were not a bit alike. In these two slovenly figures, with their

coarse lips, teeth, and noses (Ostrodumov was even pock-marked), there

was something honest and firm and persevering.

"Have you seen Nejdanov?" Ostrodumov asked.

"Yes. He will be back directly. He has gone to the library with some

books."

Ostrodumov spat to one side.

"Why is he always rushing about nowadays? One can never get hold of

him."

Mashurina took out another cigarette.

"He's bored," she remarked, lighting it carefully.

"Bored!" Ostrodumov repeated reproachfully. "What self-indulgence! One

would think we had no work to do. Heaven knows how we shall get through

with it, and he complains of being bored!"

"Have you heard from Moscow?" Mashurina asked after a pause.

"Yes. A letter came three days ago."

"Have you read it?"

Ostrodumov nodded his head.

"Well? What news?

"Some of us must go there soon."

Mashurina took the cigarette out of her mouth.

"But why?" she asked. "They say everything is going on well there."

"Yes, that is so, but one man has turned out unreliable and must be

got rid of. Besides that, there are other things. They want you to come

too."

"Do they say so in the letter?"

"Yes."

Mashurina shook back her heavy hair, which was twisted into a small

plait at the back, and fell over her eyebrows in front.

"Well," she remarked; "if the thing is settled, then there is nothing

more to be said."

"Of course not. Only one can't do anything without money, and where are

we to get it from?"

Mashurina became thoughtful.

"Nejdanov must get the money," she said softly, as if to herself.

"That is precisely what I have come about," Ostrodumov observed.

"Have you got the letter?" Mashurina asked suddenly.

"Yes. Would you like to see it?"

"I should rather. But never mind, we can read it together presently."

"You need not doubt what I say. I am speaking the truth," Ostrodumov

grumbled.

"I do not doubt it in the least." They both ceased speaking and, as

before, clouds of smoke rose silently from their mouths and curled

feebly above their shaggy heads.

A sound of goloshes was heard from the passage.

"There he is," Mashurina whispered.

The door opened slightly and a head was thrust in, but it was not the

head of Nejdanov.

It was a round head with rough black hair, a broad wrinkled forehead,

bright brown eyes under thick eyebrows, a snub nose and a humorously-set

mouth. The head looked round, nodded, smiled, showing a set of tiny

white teeth, and came into the room with its feeble body, short arms,

and bandy legs, which were a little lame. As soon as Mashurina and

Ostrodumov caught sight of this head, an expression of contempt mixed

with condescension came over their faces, as if each was thinking

inwardly, "What a nuisance!" but neither moved nor uttered a single

word. The newly arrived guest was not in the least taken aback by this

reception, however; on the contrary it seemed to amuse him.

"What is the meaning of this?" he asked in a squeaky voice. "A duet? Why

not a trio? And where's the chief tenor?

"Do you mean Nejdanov, Mr. Paklin?" Ostrodumov asked solemnly.

"Yes, Mr. Ostrodumov."

"He will be back directly, Mr. Paklin."

"I am glad to hear that, Mr. Ostrodumov."

The little cripple turned to Mashurina. She frowned, and continued

leisurely puffing her cigarette.

"How are you, my dear... my dear... I am so sorry. I always forget your

Christian name and your father's name."

Mashurina shrugged her shoulders.

"There is no need for you to know it. I think you know my surname. What

more do you want? And why do you always keep on asking how I am? You see

that I am still in the land of the living!"

"Of course!" Paklin exclaimed, his face twitching nervously. "If you had

been elsewhere, your humble servant would not have had the pleasure of

seeing you here, and of talking to you! My curiosity is due to a bad,

old-fashioned habit. But with regard to your name, it is awkward,

somehow, simply to say Mashurina. I know that even in letters you only

sign yourself Bonaparte! I beg pardon, Mashurina, but in conversation,

however--"

"And who asks you to talk to me, pray?"

Paklin gave a nervous, gulpy laugh.

"Well, never mind, my dear. Give me your hand. Don't be cross. I know

you mean well, and so do I... Well?"

Paklin extended his hand, Mashurina looked at him severely and extended

her own.

"If you really want to know my name," she said with the same expression

of severity on her face, "I am called Fiekla."

"And I, Pemien," Ostrodumov added in his bass voice.

"How very instructive! Then tell me, Oh Fiekla! and you, Oh Pemien! why

you are so unfriendly, so persistently unfriendly to me when I--"

"Mashurina thinks," Ostrodumov interrupted him, "and not only Mashurina,

that you are not to be depended upon, because you always laugh at

everything."

Paklin turned round on his heels.

"That is the usual mistake people make about me, my dear Pemien! In the

first place, I am not always laughing, and even if I were, that is no

reason why you should not trust me. In the second, I have been flattered

with your confidence on more than one occasion before now, a convincing

proof of my trustworthiness. I am an honest man, my dear Pemien."

Ostrodumov muttered something between his teeth, but Paklin continued

without the slightest trace of a smile on his face.

"No, I am not always laughing! I am not at all a cheerful person. You

have only to look at me!"

Ostrodumov looked at him. And really, when Paklin was not laughing, when

he was silent, his face assumed a dejected, almost scared expression;

it became funny and rather sarcastic only when he opened his lips.

Ostrodumov did not say anything, however, and Paklin turned to Mashurina

again.

"Well? And how are your studies getting on? Have you made any

progress in your truly philanthropical art? Is it very hard to help an

inexperienced citizen on his first appearance in this world?

"It is not at all hard if he happens to be no bigger than you are!"

Mashurina retorted with a self-satisfied smile. (She had quite recently

passed her examination as a midwife. Coming from a poor aristocratic

family, she had left her home in the south of Russia about two years

before, and with about twelve shillings in her pocket had arrived in

Moscow, where she had entered a lying-in institution and had worked

very hard to gain the necessary certificate. She was unmarried and

very chaste.) "No wonder!" some sceptics may say (bearing in mind the

description of her personal appearance; but we will permit ourselves to

say that it was wonderful and rare).

Paklin laughed at her retort.

"Well done, my dear! I feel quite crushed! But it serves me right for

being such a dwarf! I wonder where our host has got to?"

Paklin purposely changed the subject of conversation, which was rather a

sore one to him. He could never resign himself to his small stature, nor

indeed to the whole of his unprepossessing figure. He felt it all the

more because he was passionately fond of women and would have given

anything to be attractive to them. The consciousness of his pitiful

appearance was a much sorer point with him than his low origin and

unenviable position in society. His father, a member of the lower middle

class, had, through all sorts of dishonest means, attained the rank of

titular councillor. He had been fairly successful as an intermediary

in legal matters, and managed estates and house property. He had made a

moderate fortune, but had taken to drink towards the end of his life and

had left nothing after his death.

Young Paklin, he was called Sila--Sila Samsonitch, [Meaning strength,

son of Samson] and always regarded this name as a joke against himself,

was educated in a commercial school, where he had acquired a good

knowledge of German. After a great many difficulties he had entered an

office, where he received a salary of five hundred roubles a year,

out of which he had to keep himself, an invalid aunt, and a humpbacked

sister. At the time of our story Paklin was twenty-eight years old.

He had a great many acquaintances among students and young people,

who liked him for his cynical wit, his harmless, though biting,

self-confident speeches, his one-sided, unpedantic, though genuine,

learning, but occasionally they sat on him severely. Once, on arriving

late at a political meeting, he hastily began excusing himself. "Paklin

was afraid!" some one sang out from a corner of the room, and everyone

laughed. Paklin laughed with them, although it was like a stab in his

heart. "He is right, the blackguard!" he thought to himself. Nejdanov he

had come across in a little Greek restaurant, where he was in the

habit of taking his dinner, and where he sat airing his rather free

and audacious views. He assured everyone that the main cause of his

democratic turn of mind was the bad Greek cooking, which upset his

liver.

"I wonder where our host has got to?" he repeated. "He has been out of

sorts lately. Heaven forbid that he should be in love!"

Mashurina scowled.

"He has gone to the library for books. As for falling in love, he has

neither the time nor the opportunity."

"Why not with you?" almost escaped Paklin's lips.

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