Introduction I

Turgenev is an author who no longer belongs to Russia only. During the last fifteen years of his life he won for himself the reading public, first in France, then in Germany and America, and finally in England.

In his funeral oration¹ the spokesman of the most artistic³ and critical of European nations, Ernest Renan, hailed him as one of the greatest writers of our times: ‘The Master, whose exquisite⁴ works have charmed our century, stands more than any other man as the incarnation of a whole race,’ because ‘a whole world lived in him and spoke² through his mouth.’ Not the Russian world only, we may add, but the whole Slavonic world, to which it was ‘an honour to have been expressed by so great a Master.’

This recognition was, however, of slow growth. It had nothing in it of the sudden wave of curiosity and gushing⁵ enthusiasm which in a few years lifted Count Tolstoi to world-wide fame. Neither in the personality of Turgenev, nor in his talent, was there anything to strike and carry away popular imagination.

By the fecundity⁶ of his creative talent Turgenev stands with the greatest authors of all times. The gallery of living people, men, and especially women, each different and perfectly⁷ individualised, yet all the creatures of actual life, whom Turgenev introduces to us; the vast body of psychological truths he discovers, the subtle shades of men’s feelings he reveals to us, is such as only the greatest among the great have succeeded in leaving as their artistic inheritance to their country and to the world.

As regards his method of dealing⁸ with his material and shaping it into mould, he stands even higher than as a pure creator. Tolstoi is more plastical, and certainly as deep and original and rich in creative power as Turgenev, and Dostoevsky is more intense, fervid⁹, and dramatic. But as an artist, as master of the combination of details into a harmonious¹⁰ whole, as an architect of imaginative work, he surpasses all the prose writers of his country, and has but few equals among the great novelists of other lands. Twenty-five years ago, on reading the translation of one of his short stories (Assya), George Sand, who was then at the apogee¹¹ of her fame, wrote to him: ‘Master, all of us have to go to study at your school.’ This was, indeed, a generous compliment, coming from the representative of French literature which is so eminently¹² artistic. But it was not flattery. As an artist, Turgenev in reality stands with the classics who may be studied and admired for their perfect form long after the interest of their subject has disappeared. But it seems that in his very devotion to art and beauty he has purposely restricted the range of his creations.

To one familiar with all Turgenev’s works it is evident that he possessed¹⁴ the keys of all human emotions, all human feelings, the highest and the lowest, the noble as well as the base. From the height of his superiority he saw all, understood all: Nature and men had no secrets hidden from his calm, penetrating¹⁵ eyes. In his latter days, sketches¹⁶ such as Clara Militch, The Song of Triumphant¹⁷ Love, The Dream, and the incomparable Phantoms¹⁸, he showed that he could equal Edgar Poe, Hofmann, and Dostoevsky in the mastery of the fantastical, the horrible, the mysterious, and the incomprehensible, which live somewhere in human nerves, though not to be defined by reason.

But there was in him such a love of light, sunshine, and living human poetry, such an organic aversion for all that is ugly, or coarse and discordant¹⁹, that he made himself almost exclusively the poet of the gentler side of human nature. On the fringe of his pictures or in their background, just for the sake of contrast, he will show us the vices²⁰, the cruelties, even the mire¹³ of life. But he cannot stay in these gloomy regions, and he hastens back to the realms of the sun and flowers, or to the poetical²¹ moonlight of melancholy²², which he loves best because in it he can find expression for his own great sorrowing heart.

Even jealousy²³, which is the black shadow of the most poetical of human feelings, is avoided by the gentle artist. He hardly ever describes it, only alluding²⁴ to it cursorily²⁵. But there is no novelist who gives so much room to the pure, crystalline, eternally youthful feeling of love. We may say that the description of love is Turgenev’s speciality. What Francesco Petrarca did for one kind of love — the romantic, artificial, hot-house love of the times of chivalry²⁶ — Turgenev did for the natural, spontaneous, modern love in all its variety of forms, kinds, and manifestations²⁷: the slow and gradual as well as the sudden and instantaneous; the spiritual, the admiring and inspiring, as well as the life-poisoning, terrible kind of love, which infects a man as a prolonged disease. There is something prodigious²⁸ in Turgenev’s insight into, and his inexhaustible richness, truthfulness²⁹, and freshness in the rendering³⁰ of those emotions which have been the theme of all poets and novelists for two thousand years.

In the well-known memoirs³¹ of Caroline Bauer one comes across a curious legend about Paganini. She tells that the great enchanter owed his unique command over the emotions of his audiences to a peculiar³² use of one single string, G, which he made sing and whisper, cry and thunder, at the touch of his marvellous bow.

There is something of this in Turgenev’s description of love. He has many other strings³³ at his harp³⁴, but his greatest effect he obtains in touching³⁵ this one. His stories are not love poems. He only prefers to present his people in the light of that feeling in which a man’s soul gathers up all its highest energies, and melts as in a crucible³⁶, showing its dross³⁷ and its pure metal.

Turgenev began his literary career and won an enormous popularity in Russia by his sketches from peasant life. His Diary of a Sportsman contains some of the best of his short stories, and his Country Inn, written a few years later, in the maturity³⁸ of his talent, is as good as Tolstoi’s little masterpiece, Polikushka.

He was certainly able to paint all classes and conditions of Russian people. But in his greater works Turgenev lays the action exclusively with one class of Russian people. There is nothing of the enormous canvas of Count Tolstoi, in which the whole of Russia seems to pass in review before the readers. In Turgenev’s novels we see only educated Russia, or rather the more advanced thinking part of it, which he knew best, because he was a part of it himself.

We are far from regretting this specialisation. Quality can sometimes hold its own against quantity. Although small numerically, the section of Russian society which Turgenev represents is enormously interesting, because it is the brain of the nation, the living ferment³⁹ which alone can leaven⁴⁰ the huge unformed masses. It is upon them that depend the destinies of their country. Besides, the artistic value of his works could only be enhanced by his concentrating his genius upon a field so familiar to him, and engrossing⁴¹ so completely his mind and his sympathies. What he loses in dimensions he gains in correctness, depth, wonderful subtlety⁴² and effectiveness of every minute detail, and the surpassing beauty of the whole. The jewels of art he left us are like those which nations store in the sanctuaries⁴³ of their museums and galleries to be admired, the longer they are studied. But we must look to Tolstoi for the huge and towering monuments, hewn in massive granite⁴⁴, to be put upon some cross way of nations as an object of wonder and admiration⁴⁵ for all who come from the four winds of heaven.

Turgenev did not write for the masses but for the elite⁴⁶ among men. The fact that .he has won such a fame among foreigners, and that the number of his readers is widening every year, proves that great art is international, and also, I may say, that artistic taste and understanding is growing everywhere.

1 oration   

n.演说，致辞，叙述法

参考例句：

• He delivered an oration on the decline of family values.他发表了有关家庭价值观的衰退的演说。
• He was asked to deliver an oration at the meeting.他被邀请在会议上发表演说。

2 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

3 artistic   

adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的

参考例句：

• The picture on this screen is a good artistic work.这屏风上的画是件很好的艺术品。
• These artistic handicrafts are very popular with foreign friends.外国朋友很喜欢这些美术工艺品。

4 exquisite   

adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的

参考例句：

• I was admiring the exquisite workmanship in the mosaic.我当时正在欣赏镶嵌画的精致做工。
• I still remember the exquisite pleasure I experienced in Bali.我依然记得在巴厘岛所经历的那种剧烈的快感。

5 gushing   

adj.迸出的；涌出的；喷出的；过分热情的v.喷，涌( gush的现在分词 )；滔滔不绝地说话

参考例句：

• blood gushing from a wound 从伤口冒出的血
• The young mother was gushing over a baby. 那位年轻的母亲正喋喋不休地和婴儿说话。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 fecundity   

n.生产力；丰富

参考例句：

• The probability of survival is the reciprocal of fecundity.生存的概率是生殖力的倒数。
• The boy's fecundity of imagination amazed his teacher.男孩想像力的丰富使教师感到惊异。

7 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

8 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

9 fervid   

adj.热情的；炽热的

参考例句：

• He is a fervid orator.他是个慷慨激昂的演说者。
• He was a ready scholar as you are,but more fervid and impatient.他是一个聪明的学者，跟你一样，不过更加热情而缺乏耐心。

10 harmonious   

adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的

参考例句：

• Their harmonious relationship resulted in part from their similar goals.他们关系融洽的部分原因是他们有着相似的目标。
• The room was painted in harmonious colors.房间油漆得色彩调和。

11 apogee   

n.远地点；极点；顶点

参考例句：

• The orbit of the artificial satellite has an apogee of 200 miles from the earth.这个人造卫星的轨道，其最远点在离地球200英里的地方。
• Apogean tides occur when the moon is at the apogee of its orbit.远月潮在月球位于其轨道的最远点时发生。

12 eminently   

adv.突出地；显著地；不寻常地

参考例句：

• She seems eminently suitable for the job. 她看来非常适合这个工作。
• It was an eminently respectable boarding school. 这是所非常好的寄宿学校。 来自《简明英汉词典》

13 mire   

n.泥沼，泥泞；v.使...陷于泥泞，使...陷入困境

参考例句：

• I don't want my son's good name dragged through the mire.我不想使我儿子的名誉扫地。
• He has rescued me from the mire of misery.他把我从苦海里救了出来。

14 possessed   

adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的

参考例句：

• He flew out of the room like a man possessed.他像着了魔似地猛然冲出房门。
• He behaved like someone possessed.他行为举止像是魔怔了。

15 penetrating   

adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的

参考例句：

• He had an extraordinarily penetrating gaze. 他的目光有股异乎寻常的洞察力。
• He examined the man with a penetrating gaze. 他以锐利的目光仔细观察了那个人。

16 sketches   

n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概

参考例句：

• The artist is making sketches for his next painting. 画家正为他的下一幅作品画素描。
• You have to admit that these sketches are true to life. 你得承认这些素描很逼真。 来自《简明英汉词典》

17 triumphant   

adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的

参考例句：

• The army made a triumphant entry into the enemy's capital.部队胜利地进入了敌方首都。
• There was a positively triumphant note in her voice.她的声音里带有一种极为得意的语气。

18 phantoms   

n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They vanished down the stairs like two phantoms. 他们像两个幽灵似的消失在了楼下。 来自辞典例句
• The horrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it. 他刚才度过的恐布之夜留下了种种错觉。 来自辞典例句

19 discordant   

adj.不调和的

参考例句：

• Leonato thought they would make a discordant pair.里奥那托认为他们不适宜作夫妻。
• For when we are deeply mournful discordant above all others is the voice of mirth.因为当我们极度悲伤的时候，欢乐的声音会比其他一切声音都更显得不谐调。

20 vices   

缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳

参考例句：

• In spite of his vices, he was loved by all. 尽管他有缺点，还是受到大家的爱戴。
• He vituperated from the pulpit the vices of the court. 他在教堂的讲坛上责骂宫廷的罪恶。

21 poetical   

adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的

参考例句：

• This is a poetical picture of the landscape. 这是一幅富有诗意的风景画。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• John is making a periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion. 约翰正在对陈腐的诗风做迂回冗长的研究。 来自辞典例句

22 melancholy   

n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的

参考例句：

• All at once he fell into a state of profound melancholy.他立即陷入无尽的忧思之中。
• He felt melancholy after he failed the exam.这次考试没通过，他感到很郁闷。

23 jealousy   

n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌

参考例句：

• Some women have a disposition to jealousy.有些女人生性爱妒忌。
• I can't support your jealousy any longer.我再也无法忍受你的嫉妒了。

24 alluding   

提及，暗指( allude的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He didn't mention your name but I was sure he was alluding to you. 他没提你的名字，但是我确信他是暗指你的。
• But in fact I was alluding to my physical deficiencies. 可我实在是为自己的容貌寒心。

25 cursorily   

adv.粗糙地，疏忽地，马虎地

参考例句：

• The subject has been referred to cursorily in the preface. 这个问题在序言中已粗略地提到了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The stags line up against the wall, chat cursorily with one another. 光棍来宾都一字靠在墙上，有口无心地聊着天儿。 来自辞典例句

26 chivalry   

n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤

参考例句：

• The Middle Ages were also the great age of chivalry.中世纪也是骑士制度盛行的时代。
• He looked up at them with great chivalry.他非常有礼貌地抬头瞧她们。

27 manifestations   

n.表示，显示（manifestation的复数形式）

参考例句：

• These were manifestations of the darker side of his character. 这些是他性格阴暗面的表现。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• To be wordly-wise and play safe is one of the manifestations of liberalism. 明哲保身是自由主义的表现之一。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

28 prodigious   

adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的

参考例句：

• This business generates cash in prodigious amounts.这种业务收益丰厚。
• He impressed all who met him with his prodigious memory.他惊人的记忆力让所有见过他的人都印象深刻。

29 truthfulness   

n. 符合实际

参考例句：

• Among her many virtues are loyalty, courage, and truthfulness. 她有许多的美德，如忠诚、勇敢和诚实。
• I fired a hundred questions concerning the truthfulness of his statement. 我对他发言的真实性提出一连串质问。

30 rendering   

n.表现，描写

参考例句：

• She gave a splendid rendering of Beethoven's piano sonata.她精彩地演奏了贝多芬的钢琴奏鸣曲。
• His narrative is a super rendering of dialect speech and idiom.他的叙述是方言和土语最成功的运用。

31 memoirs   

n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数)

参考例句：

• Her memoirs were ghostwritten. 她的回忆录是由别人代写的。
• I watched a trailer for the screenplay of his memoirs. 我看过以他的回忆录改编成电影的预告片。 来自《简明英汉词典》

32 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

33 strings   

n.弦

参考例句：

• He sat on the bed,idly plucking the strings of his guitar.他坐在床上，随意地拨着吉他的弦。
• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。

34 harp   

n.竖琴；天琴座

参考例句：

• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。
• He played an Irish melody on the harp.他用竖琴演奏了一首爱尔兰曲调。

35 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。

36 crucible   

n.坩锅，严酷的考验

参考例句：

• The alliance had been forged in the crucible of war.这个联盟经受了战争的严峻考验。
• Put the required amount of metal into the crucible.把适量的金属放入坩埚。

37 dross   

n.渣滓；无用之物

参考例句：

• Caroline felt the value of the true ore,and knew the deception of the flashy dross.卡罗琳辨别出了真金的价值，知道那种炫耀的铁渣只有迷惑人的外表。
• The best players go off to the big clubs,leaving us the dross.最好的队员都投奔大俱乐部去了，就只给我们剩下些不中用的人。

38 maturity   

n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期

参考例句：

• These plants ought to reach maturity after five years.这些植物五年后就该长成了。
• This is the period at which the body attains maturity.这是身体发育成熟的时期。

39 ferment   

vt.使发酵；n./vt.（使）激动，（使）动乱

参考例句：

• Fruit juices ferment if they are kept a long time.果汁若是放置很久，就会发酵。
• The sixties were a time of theological ferment.六十年代是神学上骚动的时代。

40 leaven   

v.使发酵；n.酵母；影响

参考例句：

• These men have been the leaven in the lump of the race.如果说这个种族是块面团，这些人便是发酵剂。
• The leaven of reform was working.改革的影响力在起作用。

41 engrossing   

adj.使人全神贯注的，引人入胜的v.使全神贯注( engross的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He told us an engrossing story. 他给我们讲了一个引人入胜的故事。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• It might soon have ripened into that engrossing feeling. 很快便会发展成那种压倒一切的感情的。 来自辞典例句

42 subtlety   

n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别

参考例句：

• He has shown enormous strength,great intelligence and great subtlety.他表现出充沛的精力、极大的智慧和高度的灵活性。
• The subtlety of his remarks was unnoticed by most of his audience.大多数听众都没有觉察到他讲话的微妙之处。

43 sanctuaries   

n.避难所( sanctuary的名词复数 )；庇护；圣所；庇护所

参考例句：

• The designation of special marine reserves and marine sanctuaries shall be subject to the State Council for approval. 海洋特别保护区、海上自然保护区的确定，须经国务院批准。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• After 1965 he acquiesced when they established sanctuaries on that soil. 1965年以后，他默认了他们在那块土地上建立庇护所。 来自辞典例句

44 granite   

adj.花岗岩，花岗石

参考例句：

• They squared a block of granite.他们把一块花岗岩加工成四方形。
• The granite overlies the older rocks.花岗岩躺在磨损的岩石上面。

45 admiration   

n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕

参考例句：

• He was lost in admiration of the beauty of the scene.他对风景之美赞不绝口。
• We have a great admiration for the gold medalists.我们对金牌获得者极为敬佩。

46 elite   

n.精英阶层；实力集团；adj.杰出的，卓越的

参考例句：

• The power elite inside the government is controlling foreign policy.政府内部的一群握有实权的精英控制着对外政策。
• We have a political elite in this country.我们国家有一群政治精英。