Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/130

 of true drama, as every one knows who has read or heard Carmen; it is needless to say that Turgenev has developed it with consummate skill. Turgenev regarded brilliantly wicked women with hatred and loathing, but also with a kind of terror; and he has never failed to make them sinister and terrible. Irina as a young girl nearly ruined the life of Litvinov; and now we find him at Baden, his former passion apparently conquered, and he himself engaged to Turgenev's ideal woman, Tanya, not clever, but modest, sensible, and true-hearted, another Lisa. The contrast between these two women, who instinctively understand each other immediately and the struggle of each for the soul of the hero, shows Turgenev at his best. It is remarkable, too, how clearly the reader sees the heart of the man, so obscure to himself; and how evident it is that in the very midst of his passion for Irina, his love for Tanya remains. Irina is a firework, Tanya a star; and even the biggest skyrockets, that illuminate all the firmament, do not for long conceal the stars.

Turgenev thoroughly relieved his mind in Smoke; and in the novel that followed it, Torrents of Spring, he omitted politics and "movements" altogether, and confined himself to human nature in its eternal aspect. For this very reason the book attracted little attention in Russia, and is usually dismissed