It seems to me that Turgenieff, as an artist, saw nothing in my father
beyond his great literary talent, and was unwilling to allow him the
right to be anything besides an artist and a writer. Any other line of
activity on my father's part offended Turgenieff, as it were, and he was
angry with my father because he did not follow his advice. He was much
older than my father, [18] he did not hesitate to rank his own talent
lower than my father's, and demanded only one thing of him, that he
should devote all the energies of his life to his literary work. And, lo
and behold! my father would have nothing to do with his magnanimity and
humility, would not listen to his advice, but insisted on going the road
which his own tastes and nature pointed out to him. Turgenieff's
tastes and character were diametrically opposed to my father's. While
opposition always inspired my father and lent him strength, it had just
the opposite effect on Turgenieff.
Being wholly in agreement with my sister's views, I will merely
supplement them with the words uttered by his brother, Nikolai
Nikolayevitch, who said that "Turgenieff cannot reconcile himself to
the idea that Lyovotchka is growing up and freeing himself from his
tutelage."
As a matter of fact, when Turgenieff was already a famous writer, no
one had ever heard of Tolstoy, and, as Fet expressed it, there was only
"something said about his stories from 'Childhood.'"
I can imagine with what secret veneration a young writer, just
beginning, must have regarded Turgenieff at that time, and all the more
because Ivan Sergeyevitch was a great friend of my father's elder and
beloved brother Nikolai.
I do not like to assert it positively, but it seems to me that just
as Turgenieff was unwilling to confine himself to "merely friendly
relations," so my father also felt too warmly toward Ivan Sergeyevitch,
and that was the very reason why they could never meet without
disagreeing and quarreling. In confirmation of what I say here is
a passage from a letter written by V. Botkin, a close friend of my
father's and of Ivan Sergeyevitch's, to A. A. Fet, written immediately
after their quarrel:
I think that Tolstoy really has a passionately affectionate nature
and he would like to love Turgenieff in the warmest way possible; but
unfortunately his impulsive feeling encounters nothing but a kindly,
good-natured indifference, and he can by no means reconcile himself to
that.
Turgenieff himself said that when they first came to know each other my
father dogged his heels "like a woman in love," and at one time he used
to avoid him, because he was afraid of his spirit of opposition.
My father was perhaps irritated by the slightly patronizing tone which
Turgenieff adopted from the very outset of their acquaintance; and
Turgenieff was irritated by my father's "crankiness," which distracted
him from "his proper metier, literature."
In 1870, before the date of the quarrel, Turgenieff wrote to Fet:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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