Page:Sarolea - Great Russia.djvu/119

Rh when crossed in love, without any resource against temptation or misfortune. This paralysis of the will, this aboulie—no one has described and diagnosed with a surer penetration than Turgenev, because he himself was so profoundly affected by it, and because it is the constitutional malady of the Russian soul. How can one escape being boulique, like Rudin, at a time when the will of one individual could break everything and substitute itself for everything? How could one help being fantastic, like Irène, in a country where despotism and caprice reign supreme? How can one avoid violence and Nihilism, like that of Bazarov, under a régime where nothing could be obtained by reason and persuasion, and where one must be either a victim or a despot?

VI

a writer, Turgenev is without a rival. He is the purest of stylists, the first classical prose writer of his country. Like Pushkin, he had the most intimate knowledge and mastery of the resources and the riches of the Russian tongue. I remember once, when in the Crimea, and wishing to learn the Russian language, I asked Maxim Gorky what would be the best