Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VI).djvu/13

Rh the Solomins, the practical leaders who must come from 'the people' itself.

In drawing Nezhdanov, Turgenev was on his own ground: the type was very sympathetic to him, for he too felt all his life with despair that the gulf, that separated 'the people' from those who would lead them, was too great to be successfully crossed; and his own inner life was a turning away from the politicians, who traduced him and watched him with suspicion, to art as a refuge from reality. But in drawing Solomin, the leader coming from the people, Turgenev did not achieve an artistic success. The truth is, this type was then a scarce one, and to-day it is not prominent. It is this type of man that Russia needs more than any other, the man of firmness and character. By temperament Turgenev was antagonistic to it, and accordingly Solomin is a little too doubtful, a little too undetermined, a little too wooden. One cannot see precisely what is in him, and he does not present enough of the rich contradictions and human variations of a living man. True, Solomin typifies the splendid sturdiness of the Russian people, the caution and craftiness of the peasant-born and