Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/135

 book is Nezhdanov, who is entirely true to life in his uncertainty and in his futility; he does not know whether or not he is in love, and he does not know at the last what the "cause" really is. He fails to understand the woman who accompanies him, he fails to understand Solomin, and he fails to understand himself. So he finally does what so many Russian dreamers have done — he places against his own breast the pistol he had intended for a less dangerous enemy. But he is a dead man long before that. In sharp contrast with him, Turgenev has created the character Solomin, who is not at all "typically Russian," but who must be if the revolutionary cause is to triumph. He seems unreal because he is unreal; he is the ideal. He is the man of practical worth, the man who is not passion's slave, and Turgenev loved him for the same reason that Hamlet loved Horatio. Amid all the vain babble of the other characters, Solomin stands out salient, the man who will eventually save Russia without knowing it. His power of will is in inverse proportion to his fluency of speech. The typical Russian, as portrayed by Turgenev, says much, and does little; Solomin lives a life of cheerful, reticent activity. As the revolution is not at hand, the best thing to do in the interim is to accomplish something useful. He has learned how to labour and to wait. "This