Helen and Insároff

Already, in Natásha, Turguéneff had given a life-picture of a Russian girl who has grown up in the quietness of village life, but has in her heart, and mind, and will the germs of that which moves human beings to higher action. Rúdin’s spirited words, his appeals to what is grand and worth living for, inflamed her. She was ready to follow him, to support him in the great work which he so eagerly and uselessly searched for, but it was he who proved to be her inferior. Turguéneff thus foresaw, since 1855, the coming of that type of woman who later on played so prominent a part in the revival of Young Russia. Four years later, in On the Eve, he gave, in Helen, a further and fuller development of the same type. Helen is not satisfied with the dull, trifling life in her own family, and she longs for a wider sphere of action. “To be good is not enough; to do good-yes; that is the great thing in life,” she writes in her diary. But whom does she meet in her surroundings? Shúbin, a talented artist, a spoiled child, “a butterfly which admires itself “; Berséneff, a future professor, a true Russian nature — an excellent man, most unselfish and modest, but wanting inspiration, totally lacking in vigour and initiative. These two are the best. There is a moment when Shúbin as he rambles on a summer night with his friend Berséneff, says to him: “I love Helen, but Helen loves you... Sing, sing louder, if you can; and if you cannot, then take off your hat, look above, and smile to the stars. They all look upon you, upon you alone: they always look on those who are in love.” But Berséneff returns to his small room, and opens Raumer’s “History of the Hohenstauffens,” on the same page where he had left it the last time...

Thereupon comes Insároff, a Bulgarian patriot, entirely absorbed by one idea — the liberation of his mother-country; a man of steel, rude to the touch, who has cast away all melancholy philosophical dreaming, and marches straight forward, towards the aim of his life — and the choice of Helen is settled. The pages given to the awakening of her feeling and to its growth are among the best ever written by Turguéneff. When Insároff suddenly becomes aware of his own love for Helen, his first decision is to leave at once the suburb of Moscow, where they are all staying, and Russia as well. He goes to Helen’s house to announce there his departure. Helen asks him to promise that he will see her again to-morrow before he leaves, but he does not promise. Helen waits for him, and when he has not come in the afternoon, she herself goes to him. Rain and thunder overtake her on the road, and she steps into an old chapel by the roadside. There she meets Insároff, and the explanation between the shy, modest girl who perceives that Insároff loves her, and the patriot, who discovers in her the force which, far from standing in his way, would only double his own energy, terminates by Insároff exclaiming: “Well, then, welcome, my wife before God and men!”

In Helen we have the true type of that Russian woman who a few years later joined heart and soul in all movements for Russian freedom: the woman who conquered her right to knowledge, totally reformed the education of children, fought for the liberation of the toiling masses, endured unbroken in the snows and gaols of Siberia, died if necessary on the scaffold, and at the present moment continues with unabated energy the same struggle. The high artistic beauty of this novel has already been incidentally mentioned. Only one reproach can be made to it: the hero, Insároff, the man of action, is not sufficiently living. But both for the general architecture of the novel and the beauty of its separate scenes, beginning with the very first and ending with the last, On the Eve stands among the highest productions of the sort in all literatures.