Monday, August 04, 2008

Nezhdanov: The idealist of realism

Nezhdanov dies, he kills himself, his lover marries, the plotters or so-called revolutionaries are arrested and some jailed, life moves on, the revolution is stalled, the rich coat of Petersburg attracts its most powerful citizens again. In Nezhdanov, Turgenev has created the quintessential tragic revolutionary, one who refuses to bargain, for whom any doubt in the cause itself is not worth the trouble, a slight hesitation, a difference of opinion or temperament is enough to foment doubt. Nezhdanov has doubts right from the beginning, the cause seems vague to him, he is not ready to jump himself blindly or let others do so and yet carry on does he, in spite of himself, everyone else even the very conditions he finds himself in.

Nezhdanov's suicide is an act of mercy. To languish in Siberia would have been a terrible injustice for he not only mistrusts the mission and its ultimate aims but is not sure all along what its aims actually are. he loves life but does not hate its seedier manifestations, he loves his country but cannot understand how the peasants can drink vodka and leer in oblivion, he is not a slavophile, he is a figure of moderation though he carries a gun only to set it on himself. Even in love, the slightest of doubts in affections returned makes him wonder a hundred times, he is zealously unselfish, polite and considerate, and his act of suicide is not an act of selfishness but an acknowledgement of the haste of others and a saving grace for them. His death is an act of compassion.

Can Nezhdanov, from Virgin Soil be compared to Stavrogin from The Devils? The answer is a resolute No. I am aware that any comparison of these two novels, which I cannot help comparing will not be totally out of place, and that (all comparisons are so odious and usually tasteless) but the quality of virgin soil sets it apart for not only are the revolutionaries treated with compassion, their very notions set forth clearly, they are treated with dignity.

Dostoevsky makes fun of these pamphleteers, these revolutionaries. I remember in one episode in The Devils, they all meet to discuss something and yet no one can set about the agenda for discussion. They are treated with no dignity, it seems they are just well read criminals, whose only aim is greedy crime and the hasty dissolution of a state that has no justification to exist. The aristocratic class, the governor of the city and his wife are actually soul-less characters and yet their very base ideas and actions are covered with a slime of hypocrisy and the veneer of good breeding, coated with the profusion of French sayings with which the devils abounds. The character of Stepan Verkhovensky is one that I have no sympathy with and yet the narrator of that story wastes literally a few hundred pages on resurrecting a character that has no moral fibre.

The notion of mental illness, of greed and alcoholic abuse, of any form of ill-health or physical defect does not arise in Turgenev's fiction. The men and women are perfectly healthy, the only differences we see are the ones of class, of opinion and education over which there are no controlling factors. in fact in virgin soil, there are no lectures around fires burning all night, we know they are talking but we do not know what, there is an ongoing cause but we are privy to their innermost thoughts. We move with them, we think we know them, in fact we know when Nezhdanov falls in and out of love, but in the devils we do not know what Pyotr Verkhovensky is up to, what Stavrogin wants? The Sipyagins of virgin soil are shown as to what they really are, condescending, greedy, hypocrites and all idle talk and no class really. Contrast this usually with Dostoevsky's treatment of the aristocrats, to whom , I suspect he was slightly impartial. His treatment of the lower classes and the poor is a mixture of condescension and a sort of christian love and misguided mysticism, in which lending an ear but not shaking the hand is the epitome of charity.

Turgenev's virgin soil, his longest novel is a brilliant portrait of not just so called revolutionary action but the preceding account and post- mortem of revolutionary ideals and the pungent distaste of defeat. The last chapter when Mashurina meets the lame Paklin, when old memories are exchanged is perhaps the best in the novel, where Turgenev shows not only his humanity but his sympathy too, sympathy for the characters he has created. It is evident from his tone that his is a voice of moderation and even though he is not a man of violence, he knows that only a certain amount of activity will lead to change and change there must be. In that sense, virgin soil is a prophetic novel for within forty years, the revolutionary activities were in full swing.

Nezhdanov, young and poetic burns his verses before killing himself. He gives his lover's hand away to the person he sees his rival in love at the very moment of death. He is aware of his humiliating past but does not resent it at all. He leaves his affairs in order, he is the only member of the group who is ready. He is ready to begin, to start change. He is true and loyal, he is not a hypocrite, he gives what is not asked, his very life.

6 comments:

Alok said...

wow, that was a great way to start the essay, you revealed everything that happens in the end!!

just joking... obviously if you read to know only the ending, you are not reading well.

anyway, I am still in the middle of it. I wasted the last weekend when I should have been reading. Will get back to your essay after I am done...

Kubla Khan said...

Oh, do excuse me.... i was under the impression that you are reading it the 2nd time.

anyway, with such great fiction, nothing comes as a surprise. i am sure that you can predict most things that happen.

one of the worst things is to read these introductions in Penguin Classics.....they reveal everything.it is irritating. i fully commiserate if i revealed too much.......

Kubla Khan said...

on the other hand, there is nothing else, apart from the death, that you don't know.

Alok said...

no worries... i did read your whole post. I think The Devils should be read as a work of satire (though it is funny only in parts), that's why the characters are so grotesquely exaggerated. It is true for other Dostoevsky's novels also but this one is even more extreme and frankly i think it even segues into dishonest propaganda at places in the way it portrays those revolutionaries as absolute criminals. what redeems it is the insights Dostoevsky provides into minds which are at the extremes... (specially in Stavrogin)

Turgenev had a much more widely encompassing imaginative sympathy and that shows in Virgin Soil. It is even more surprising and impressive once you realize that he spent most of his time away from his home, in Europe.

Don't remember it was in penguin or oxford classics but the introduction to Stendhal's The Red and the Black advises to skip it and come back to it afte reading the book as it reveals plot surprises..

Kubla Khan said...

"i think it even segues into dishonest propaganda at places in the way it portrays those revolutionaries as absolute criminals. what redeems it is the insights Dostoevsky provides into minds which are at the extremes... (specially in Stavrogin)"

i could not agree more with you.
i also agree with the satire you have mentioned. the scene, as i feel it is, when long eared Shigalyov gives a lecture to the assembled people is nothing less than a farce. Turgenev is different. he hates violent action but has a deeper and broader sympathy for the causes and the ramifications of revolutionary activity. all in all, these comparisons might not be apt but they enhance our understanding of those turbulent but great times. may be.

i would love to re-read these classics but the length dissuades me. most of what i remember is sketchy and this prevents me from writing a post on these novels.( Russian lit. is the lit. of my growing up....i read the devils around the age of 13-14 and so on. the understanding of these books might be hazy too. however, i have read Virgin Soil with Smoke only last year and plan to read Dead Souls again.

i plan, hopefully to revisit these great books one day.

i hope that you will write a post on Virgin Soil and that we can write around and about the issues these books raise, if not the books proper.

btw.....am re-reading Anna Karenina these days.

Kubla Khan said...

"i think it even segues into dishonest propaganda at places in the way it portrays those revolutionaries as absolute criminals. what redeems it is the insights Dostoevsky provides into minds which are at the extremes... (specially in Stavrogin)"

i could not agree more with you.
i also agree with the satire you have mentioned. the scene, as i feel it is, when long eared Shigalyov gives a lecture to the assembled people is nothing less than a farce. Turgenev is different. he hates violent action but has a deeper and broader sympathy for the causes and the ramifications of revolutionary activity. all in all, these comparisons might not be apt but they enhance our understanding of those turbulent but great times. may be.

i would love to re-read these classics but the length dissuades me. most of what i remember is sketchy and this prevents me from writing a post on these novels.( Russian lit. is the lit. of my growing up....i read the devils around the age of 13-14 and so on. the understanding of these books might be hazy too. however, i have read Virgin Soil with Smoke only last year and plan to read Dead Souls again.

i plan, hopefully to revisit these great books one day.

i hope that you will write a post on Virgin Soil and that we can write around and about the issues these books raise, if not the books proper.

btw.....am re-reading Anna Karenina these days.