He wrote seven novels, all short and simple; the theme of each being the stock theme of leisure-class fiction, a man and a woman at the crisis of their love. His girls are very much alike; direct and honest, they flame up, and are ready to act upon their feelings, to go anywhere with the man they love. But the man does not know where to go or what to do. The hero of the first novel, Rudin, is a kind of modern Hamlet, who became proverbial as the type of Russian intellectual. He is incapable of anything but talk, and tells the girl that they must submit to her family, which opposes the marriage. In the other novels the heroes do not always submit. There is, for example, Bazarov, the Nihilist; he is a fighter, and ready for action--but Turgenev tells us what he thinks of man’s dream of accomplishment, when Bazarov scratches his finger and dies of blood poisoning. Another hero is a Bulgarian, and there is a chance for action in Bulgaria; but unfortunately this man’s lungs are weak, and he dies in the arms of the brave girl who eloped with him. You see, it is hard for Turgenev to portray anyone who believes, because he is an artist in the leisure-class tradition of fatalism and urbane incredulity. Life is a malady; it is a malady in cruel and barbarous Russia, and no less so in free but cynical and licentious Paris. Turgenev, living safely abroad, describes heroes who also live abroad; he has not the moral courage to face Russia and the Russian problem, even in his thoughts. His people are the exiles and intellectuals, the travelers and parasites, amusing themselves in the capitals of Europe. He loathes this loafing class, and satirizes it without mercy; but also he cannot help seeing the weaknesses of the revolutionists--and the revolutionists were of course indignant at that, because they were fighting for human freedom, and thought that a man of culture and enlightenment ought to help them. So there was furious controversy over each of Turgenev’s novels, and it hurt the feelings of the great, good-natured giant, and he did a lot of explaining, some of it contradictory. The truth is that he did not know quite what he believed; he was not a thinker, but merely an artist in the narrow sense of the word, one who sees what exists and portrays it with cunning skill. This makes him, of course, a darling of the leisure-class critics, art for art sakers and dilettanti. The French translations of his novels had an enormous vogue, likewise the English translations, and men like Henry James thought him a god. But out of Russia there now comes a new voice; the revolutionary proletariat is making Russia over, and the young students report themselves bored with Turgenev; he whines and moans and gets them nowhere. You see, the Russians can now act, like other people; and so the Russian Hamlet is laid on the shelf. CHAPTER LXXXIV THE DEAD-HOUSE