looked askance upon Turgeneff because also of his
long residence abroad. Consequently, when, in 1852, he published in a
Moscow newspaper a eulogistic article on Gogol (when the latter died),
which had been prohibited by the censor in St. Petersburg, the
authorities seized the opportunity to punish him. He was arrested and
condemned to a month in jail, which the daughter of the police-officer
who had charge of him, contrived to convert into residence in their
quarters, where Turgeneff wrote "Mumu"; and to residence on his estate,
which he was not allowed to leave for about two years. In 1855 he went
abroad, and thereafter he spent most of his time in Paris, Baden-Baden
(later in Bougival), returning from time to time to his Russian estate.
During this period his talent attained its zenith, and he wrote all the
most noteworthy works which assured him fame: "Rudin," "Faust," "A Nest
of Nobles," "On the Eve," and "First Love," which alone would have
sufficed to immortalize him. In 1860 he published an article entitled
"Hamlet and Don Quixote," which throws a brilliant light upon the
characters of all his types, and upon their inward springs of action.
And at last, in 1862, came his famous "Fathers and Children." The key to
the comprehension of his works is contained in his "Hamlet and Don
Quixote." His idea is that in these two types are incarnated all the
fundamental, contrasting peculiarities of the human race--both poles of
the axis upon which it revolves--and that all people belong, more or
less, to one of these two types; that every one of us inclines to be
either a Hamlet or a Don Quixote. "It is true," he adds, "that in our
day the Hamlets have become far more numerous than the Don Quixotes, but
the Don Quixotes have not died out, nevertheless." Such is his hero
"Rudin," that central type of the men of the '40's--a man whose whole
vocation consists in the dissemination of enlightening ideas, but who,
at the same time, exhibits the most complete incapacity in all his
attempts to realize those ideas in practice, and scandalous
pusillanimity when there is a question of any step which is, in the
slightest degree, decisive--a man of the head alone, incapable of doing
anything himself, because he has no nature, no blood. Such, again, is
Lavretzky ("A Nest of Nobles"), that concentrated type, not only of the
man from the best class of the landed gentry, but in general, of the
educated Slavonic man--a man who is sympathetic i