Ivan Turgenev’s “Hamlet and Don Quixote”

How fascinating that Shakespeare and Cervantes—especially the characters of Hamlet and Don Quixote—loom large in Russian consciousness. I have read Dostoyevsky and Nabokov, I have known for some time that 19th century Russians spoke of the Hamlet type and the Don Quixote type, so reading Turgenev’s essay is inevitable. 

1/ Overall, Turgenev makes some errors (like saying that Hamlet and Part 1 of Don Quixote were published the same year, or Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same day) and says some strange things, but it’s an interesting essay mainly because of the thesis: 

“In these two types, it two contrasting two poles of the human axis about which to basic tendencies, the they revolve. All men, to my mind, conform to one type or the other; one to that of Hamlet, another that of Don Quixote…” 

(translated by Moshe Spiegel) 

“What does Don Quixote typify? Faith, first of all, a belief in something eternal, indestructible—in a truth that is beyond the comprehension of the individual human being, which is to be achieved through the medium of self-abnegation and undeviating worship.” 

He acknowledges “his deranged imagination” and that “this constitutes the comic side of Don Quixote”, but “his ideal itself remains undefiled and intact.” 

I don’t agree with everything. Why, for example, does Turgenev say Don Quixote “does not probe or question”? Don Quixote becomes haunted by doubt and uncertainty near the end of Part 2. Why does Turgenev call him illiterate and unlearned? He has vast knowledge, and only seems soft in the brain regarding chivalry matters. Turgenev also says “Don Quixote loves Dulcinea ideally, chastely—so ideally that he does not discover that the object of his passion does not exist”. But we know this isn’t true: in Part 2 chapter 32, our knight says “God knows if there’s a Dulcinea in the world or not, or if she’s imagined or not” (translated by Tom Lathrop); and in the end, he can no longer pretend that Dulcinea exists. 

But generally, Turgenev is right about his faith, idealism, and lack of egotism. 

“Don Quixote is an enthusiast, radiant with his devotion to an idea.” 

Like the revolutionaries in Turgenev’s day? 

Then what does Hamlet represent? 

“Above all, analysis, scrutiny, egotism—and consequently disbelief. 

[…] Doubting everything, Hamlet pitilessly includes his own self in these doubts; he is too thoughtful, too fair-minded to be contented with what he finds within himself.” 

His self-consciousness, Turgenev says, is “the antithesis of Don Quixote’s enthusiasm.” 

“He distrusts himself and yet is deeply solicitous about himself; does not know what he is after, nor why he lives at all, and still firmly adheres to life.” 

Like the nihilists and the “superfluous men” in Turgenev’s day?  

Now that I’ve read Turgenev’s essay, I can see the idea of the Hamlets and Don Quixotes in 19th century Russia. Hamlet “vacillates, equivocates, consoles himself with self-reproach” and eventually only kills Claudius accidentally, whereas Don Quixote, “a poor man, without social connections, old and solitary, attempts single-handed to uproot all evil and to deliver the persecuted throughout the world, whoever they may be.” 

2/ Turgenev does see both sides of Don Quixote—he does see that Don Quixote is ridiculous—Nabokov focuses on only his nobility and says he “stands for everything that is gentle, forlorn, pure, unselfish, and gallant.” 

Turgenev says: 

“[Hamlet] would never crusade against windmills; and were they giants in actuality, he would likewise stay away from them. […] I presume even if truth incarnate were to arise before Hamlet, he would remain skeptical of its authenticity. Who knows but that he would challenge it, saying perhaps that there is no truth, just as there are no giants?” 

I like this point: 

“We laugh at Don Quixote, but, my dear sirs, who of us can positively affirm with certainty that he will always and under all circumstances know the difference between a brass wash basin and an enchanted golden helmet?” 

Good, that’s good.

3/ I don’t know why Turgenev talks about “the relation of the mob, of the so-called human race, to Hamlet and Don Quixote” and says that Polonius and Sancho Panza reflect this mass respectively.  

4/ Turgenev’s essay also has an interesting passage about love. Can Hamlet actually love? he asks. Turgenev says Hamlet’s feelings for Ophelia are either cynical or hyperbolic—I don’t think I would be so negative about Hamlet—there is a nobility in Hamlet that Turgenev seems not to notice, and the Russian writer doesn’t talk about the fact that Hamlet is so depressed, so cynical because he is grieving his father, angry at his mother, and disillusioned with humanity as a whole. 

This is a good point though: 

“Hamlet’s spirit of negation is skeptical of the good, but it is indubitably certain of the existence of evil, and militates against it constantly. […] Hamlet’s skepticism is unceasingly at war with falsehood and lying; thus, while disbelieving the possibility of truth’s realization now or ever, he becomes one of the chief vindicators of a truth which he himself does not fully accept.” 

5/ Turgenev says: 

“We esteem Hamlet a good deal more because of Horatio’s devotion to him.” 

But why? Is Sancho Panza not devoted to Don Quixote? 

6/ Turgenev doesn’t only compare Hamlet and Don Quixote—there’s also a section in which he compares Shakespeare and Cervantes. 

I will resist commenting—I have to think some more, and should probably read Exemplary Novels first. 

An interesting essay. Read it for yourself and tell me what you think. 

On Turgenev’s Virgin Soil

Virgin Soil is one of Turgenev’s lesser-known works. Not hard to see why. It is, as Tom of Wuthering Expectations has put it, formless.  

But if you’re interested in 19th century Russian society and politics, like I am, especially now that I have just read Gary Saul Morson’s Wonder Confronts Certainty, it is an interesting novel. It is probably Turgenev’s most political novel, or the novel where his stance is most clear: the revolutionaries are not psychopaths but naïve idealists who want to “serve the people” but know nothing about “the people”; the ideal is someone like Solomin, who introduces gradual changes and makes actual positive impact on people’s lives. If only the likes of Solomin had triumphed instead of the Bolsheviks! 

There are also some good bits in Virgin Soil. My favourite part is the chapter about the old couple, Fomushka and Fimushka—it does nothing to advance the plot, it even feels incongruous, but it’s striking and full of life. 

The characterisation of Nezhdanov and the depiction of his doubt and struggle are good. He is the most, or perhaps the only, fully developed character in the novel. Like Tolstoy always writes about the Man Who Searches for Meaning, Chekhov always writes about the Man Who Wastes His Life, Dostoyevsky always writes about the Spiteful Man, Turgenev always writes about the Superfluous Man.

Tom wrote: 

“The generation of Nihilists replaces the Superfluous Men, only to discover that they themselves were superfluous, and now the more violent, conspiratorial, anarchistic Populists elbow out the nihilists, finding, to their despair, that they are entirely superfluous.” 

Nezhdanov is another Superfluous Man. But it doesn’t feel boring—the doubt, the struggle, the gulf he feels between himself and the peasants, the feeling that “it’s difficult for an aesthete to engage with real life”, the despair and self-loathing—all that is well depicted.

There are some good moments, some good scenes throughout the book. The confrontation between Valentina Sipyagina and Marianna, for example. 

“Marianna left hastily, while Valentina Mikhailovna jumped up from her armchair, on the point of shouting and bursting into tears. But she did not know what to shout and the tears did not come. 

[…] She recognized a certain portion of truth in what she had heard. But how could she be judged so harshly? “Can I be so evil?” she thought, looking at herself in the mirror which was placed between the two windows directly in front of her. This mirror reflected a delightful, somewhat distorted face, with prominent red patches, which was nevertheless charming, and remarkable, soft, velvet eyes. “Me. Am I evil,” she thought again, “with eyes like that?”…” (Ch.26) 

(translated by Michael Pursglove) 

I like that. 

The scene where Sipyagin tricks Paklin into revealing the whereabouts of Nezhdanov and Marianna is also good, especially the moment Paklin realises what he has done and tries to justify himself, in vain. 

Some other good bits in Virgin Soil are when the characters leave things unsaid. 

“Marianna wanted to ask for an explanation of these words, but did not, and anyway, at that moment Solomin came into the room.” (Ch.36)

That scene between Nezhdanov and Marianna is very good. I don’t particularly like the romance in the novel, but that particular scene is excellent. 

“Solomin went out and caught Marianna up on the stairs. He had intended to say something to her about Nezhdanov, but remained silent. And, for her part, Marianna realized that Solomin had intended to say something to her, about Nezhdanov in particular, and that he had remained silent. And she too remained silent.” (ibid.)

I like it when a writer depicts those moments when people leave things unsaid; when they don’t say, or can’t say, something. Chekhov and Henry James are the masters of those silences, Turgenev also does it.  

Turgenev depicts another silence in the final chapter of the book: 

“Mashurina merely nodded. She wanted him to continue speaking of Nezhdanov, but could not pluck up the courage to ask him.” (Ch.38) 

The entire chapter is poignant. I like that Turgenev ends the novel not on Marianna and Solomin, but on Paklin and Mashurina: we’re in a way moved further away from Nezhdanov, but we can see the impact of his death on somebody.

There are indeed some very good bits in the book. 

Virgin Soil: Fomushka and Fimushka

Virgin Soil seems like the right book to read after Gary Saul Morson’s Wonder Confronts Certainty. 

Perhaps at some point I will write about Turgenev’s revolutionaries, but right now I’m interested in the old couple: the Subochevs, Foma Lavrentyevich (Fomushka) and Yevfimiya Pavlovna (Fimushka). 

This is how Paklin describes them: 

““No politics, no literature, nothing modern gets a look in there. […] The smell there is antique; the people are antique, the air is antique. Take anything you like and it’s antique. Catherine II, powder, hooped skirts, the eighteenth century! […] They’re awfully like one another, only she wears a mobcap and he a nightcap—with the same ruches as the mobcap, but minus the ribbon. If it wasn’t for this ribbon, you wouldn’t know who was who…”” 

(translated by Michael Pursglove) 

Personally I think not much of interest has happened before this point. Nezhdanov, an illegitimate son of an aristocrat, and a Red, is employed as a tutor by the privy councillor Sipyagin; there he meets a few progressive people who want to “do something”—Marianna (Sipyagin’s niece), Markelov (Sipyagin’s brother-in-law), Solomin (a factory owner), etc. Paklin, one of the revolutionaries Nezhdanov has known from before, visits him, gets introduced to the others, and then takes them to the Subochevs, who gave shelter to his sister. 

“The Subochevs’ coachman, too, was an extremely ancient man, redolent of train oil and pitch; his beard began near his eyes and his eyebrows fell to his beard in a little cascade. He was so slow in all his movements that he used up a whole five minutes to take a pinch of snuff, two minutes to stick his whip into his belt and over two hours to harness Moveless alone.” 

Doesn’t that sound more like something out of Gogol? 

“When together, they were never bored, so they were never apart and did not wish for any other company. Neither Fomushka nor Fimushka had ever been seriously ill, and if one of them had some slight indisposition, they both drank an infusion of lime blossom, had warm oil rubbed onto the smalls of their backs or hot fat dropped onto the soles of their feet, and it soon passed.” 

The episode with the Subochevs is unlike anything that came before. It is—I wouldn’t say out-of-place—incongruous. 

I like it though. The old couple. The house. The servants in the house. The whole scene. It is lively, and unexpected. 

Turgenev’s similes in First Love

First Love is about a 40-year-old Vladimir Petrovitch looking back at his first love—for a 21-year-old woman—when he was 16. My copy is translated by Constance Garnett. I’m not going to write much about either the story or the characters, this blog post is about similes. 

(emphases are mine) 

Here is Vladimir setting up the mood for his story: 

“I was all hope and anticipation, was a little frightened of something, and full of wonder at everything, and was on the tiptoe of expectation; my imagination played continually, fluttering rapidly about the same fancies, like martins about a bell-tower at dawn; I dreamed, was sad, even wept; but through the tears and through the sadness, inspired by a musical verse, or the beauty of evening, shot up like grass in spring the delicious sense of youth and effervescent life.” (Ch.1) 

There are 2 similes here, but the one that catches my attention more is “like martins about a bell-tower at dawn”. Birds. 

Now look at this passage, our boy Vladimir has fallen in love: 

“It is a storm, I thought; and a storm it really was, but it was raging so very far away that the thunder could not be heard; only blurred, long, as it were branching, gleams of lightning flashed continually over the sky; it was not flashing, though, so much as quivering and twitching like the wing of a dying bird. I got up, went to the window, and stood there till morning.… The lightning never ceased for an instant; it was what is called among the peasants a sparrow night. I gazed at the dumb sandy plain, at the dark mass of the Neskutchny gardens, at the yellowish facades of the distant buildings, which seemed to quiver, too, at each faint flash.… I gazed, and could not turn away; these silent lightning flashes, these gleams seemed in response to the secret silent fires which were aglow within me. Morning began to dawn; the sky was flushed in patches of crimson. As the sun came nearer, the lightning grew gradually paler, and ceased; the quivering gleams were fewer and fewer, and vanished at last, drowned in the sobering positive light of the coming day.…

And my lightning flashes vanished too. I felt great weariness and peace … but Zinaïda’s image still floated triumphant over my soul. But it, too, this image, seemed more tranquil: like a swan rising out of the reeds of a bog, it stood out from the other unbeautiful figures surrounding it, and as I fell asleep, I flung myself before it in farewell, trusting adoration.…” (Ch.7) 

2 bird similes. The entire passage is wonderful, but I especially like the originality of these images, especially when Turgenev compares lightning to “the wing of a dying bird”. 

Above are things being compared to birds, here’s a bird compared to a person: 

“… at that point my attention was absorbed by the appearance of a speckled woodpecker who climbed busily up the slender stem of a birch-tree and peeped out uneasily from behind it, first to the right, then to the left, like a musician behind the bass-viol.” (Ch.14)

I like that. Throughout First Love, the narrator compares his own feelings to fire a few times, or his thoughts to a hurricane, but those aren’t particularly interesting. I like the comparisons that are striking and unexpected, like the ones above. 

Here’s another animal simile, when Vladimir writes about his loss of interest in everything else and how he only hangs around Zinaida’s house all day: 

“Like a beetle tied by the leg, I moved continually round and round my beloved little lodge.” (Ch.9) 

Turgenev’s comparisons are unusual. This comes from the scene where Zinaida and her mother, the old princess, visit Vladimir’s house and have dinner with the family and the entire time Zinaida ignores him: 

“I was standing there in my short jacket, staring at the floor, like a man under sentence of death.” (Ch.6)

That sounds melodramatic, but it fits in perfectly with the thoughts of a boy in love for the first time. 

This one is less striking, but also interesting:  

“My “passion” dated from that day. I felt at that time, I recollect, something like what a man must feel on entering the service: I had ceased now to be simply a young boy; I was in love.” (Ch.9) 

About halfway through the book, Zinaida starts a game of comparisons with the men and boys. 

““What are those clouds like?” questioned Zinaïda; and without waiting for our answer, she said, “I think they are like the purple sails on the golden ship of Cleopatra, when she sailed to meet Antony. Do you remember, Meidanov, you were telling me about it not long ago?”

All of us, like Polonius in Hamlet, opined that the clouds recalled nothing so much as those sails, and that not one of us could discover a better comparison.” (Ch.11)

I like that—he follows a Shakespeare reference with another Shakespeare reference. Later on, Vladimir compares himself to Othello. 

(A side note: I like that since I caught the Shakespeare bug and got into him properly, I’ve been seeing him everywhere. In Tolstoy. In Chekhov. In Balzac. And now in Turgenev. The Balzac story I read the other day but didn’t finish, “Another Study of Womankind”, also referenced Othello). 

I’ve seen that some reviewers remark on the “shocking reveal/ending”. I wasn’t shocked—I actually suspected it quite early on (First Love isn’t Emma). But I do think that the second half of the novella is better than the first. At the beginning, First Love gives the impression of being light, but it isn’t. 

A good read. 

Russian literature, Chernyshevsky, and The Gift

1/ Look at this chain of novels:
In 1862, Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons was published, sparking a debate in Russia.
In response to Fathers and Sons, Nikolai Chernyshevsky wrote a novel called What Is To Be Done? whilst in prison, which was published in 1863 (What To Do? in Nabokov’s translation). 
Chernyshevsky’s ideas, utilitarianism, utopianism and stuff, were attacked by Dostoyevsky in his 1864 novel Notes from Underground.
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866) may not be seen as part of the chain of novels, but in my opinion, in Crime and Punishment he was expanding on, and developing, his ideas from Notes from Underground and arguments against utilitarianism. Dostoyevsky also pursued his ideas in other novels, especially Demons (1872).
Unlike normal people, the Russians were debating through novels.
The debate didn’t stop there.
Vladimir Nabokov’s The Gift, which he wrote between 1935 and 1937 in Berlin, was an ode to Russian literature and also an attack on Chernyshevsky’s ideas.
I’m sure there are lots of other works in the debate that have sunk into oblivion or that I simply don’t know about.

2/ In 1886, Tolstoy wrote a book called What Is To Be Done?. I don’t know if it had any relation to Chernyshevsky’s book, it could be about something else—I haven’t read it.
In 1902, Lenin published a political pamphlet called What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement. He liked the man’s ideas, I’ve heard. “Chernyshevsky's novel, far more than Marx's Capital, supplied the emotional dynamic that eventually went to make the Russian Revolution.” (source)

3/ I’m too busy (I have a film to make!) to read What Is To Be Done?, so I’m taking the easy way of reading about it.
Here are the posts from Tom at Wuthering Expectations about the book:
http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/the-nikolai-chernyshevsky-what-is-to-be.html
http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/inconsequentiality-moderatism-and.html
http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/they-related-their-histories-to-each.html
http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/except-for-sorrows-it-was-all-joy.html
http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/chernyshevsky-invents-bolshevik-he.html
http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-expulsion-of-perspicacious-reader.html
http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-theory-is-cold-but-it-teaches-man.html
He discusses Chernyshevsky’s book and Notes from Underground here:
http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/youre-wrong-about-that-too-starting.html
http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/i-was-ecstatic-i-rejoiced-and-sang.html
This is the kind of reader and book blogger we need, who suffers so that others don’t have to.
Scott G. F. Bailey has a list of bits from the book that are parodied in Notes from Underground:
http://sgfbailey.blogspot.co.uk//2014/05/it-would-be-necessary-to-describe-him.html

4/ This is a very useful essay, by Sergei Davydov, about The Gift and Chernyshevsky:
http://community.middlebury.edu/~sdavydov/The%20Gift%20Nabokov%27s%20Aesthetic%20Exorcism%20of%20Chernyshevskii,%20in%20Canadian-American%20Slavic%20Studies,%20vol.%2019,%20No.%203%20(1985),%20357-374.pdf

5/ Davydov also notes:

Interesting.

6/ However, note this paragraph in chapter 3: 

“Fyodor tried to sort out the mishmash of philosophical ideas of the time, and it seemed to him that in the very roll call of names, in their burlesque consonance, there was manifested a kind of sin against thought, a mockery of it, a blemish of the age, when some extravagantly praised Kant, others Kont (Comte), others again Hegel or Schlegel. And on the other hand he began to comprehend by degrees that such uncompromising radicals as Chernyshevski, with all their ludicrous and ghastly blunders, were, no matter how you looked at it, real heroes in their struggle with the governmental order of things (which was even more noxious and more vulgar than was their own fatuity in the realm of literary criticism) and that other oppositionists, the liberals or the Slavophiles, who risked less, were by the same token worth less than these iron squabblers.”

The 1st book you read by an author

I've just come across a blog post suggesting that readers intimidated by "long, challenging, and/or depressing classic novels" should read those writers' shorter/ easier works. 
I won't discuss that point. But here's a record of my first dates with several authors: 
William Shakespeare: Hamlet
Jane Austen: Emma
Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist 
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre 
Anne Bronte: Agnes Grey 
George Eliot: Adam Bede
Lev Tolstoy: Anna Karenina 
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment 
Nikolai Gogol: Dead Souls 
Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons 
Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary
Henry James: "Daisy Miller" and some other short stories 
Herman Melville: Moby Dick 
Mark Twain: The Prince and the Pauper
Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway 
George Orwell: 1984
Franz Kafka: short and ultra-short stories 
Vladimir Nabokov: lecture on "The Metamorphosis"; if fiction only, Lolita 
J. D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby 
William Faulkner: "A Rose for Emily" 
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: short stories 
Isabel Allende: The House of the Spirits 
Milan Kundera: The Art of the Novel; if fiction only, The Unbearable Lightness of Being 
Elfriede Jelinek: The Piano Teacher
Toni Morrison: Beloved
Paulo Coelho: The Devil and Miss Prym 
Haruki Murakami: South of the Border, West of the Sun
Patrick Suskind: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

What does it show? 
1/ I don't mind long novels. But you know that. 
2/ I have a different approach: often go straight to the most famous/ acclaimed work or 1 of them. If I'm impressed, most of the time it leads me to the author's other works; if I don't particularly like it, but feel intrigued, and question my own response, I might try again by reading another book by the same writer. If I hate it or am simply indifferent, at least I've read an important work often included among the greatest books we should read before we die, and know what it's like. 

______________________________________________________

Now, same writers but a different list- the book that made me fall in love with the author: 
William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar 
Jane Austen: Mansfield Park 
Charles Dickens: "A Christmas Carol" 
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre, now we're just friends 
Anne Bronte: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but I just like her 
George Eliot: I don't think I'm quite in love with her yet; no chemistry 
Lev Tolstoy: Anna Karenina 
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Notes from Underground 
Nikolai Gogol: Dead Souls 
Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons 
Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary
Henry James: "Daisy Miller" 
Herman Melville: Moby Dick 
Mark Twain: not there yet, but I'll come back to him some day
Virginia Woolf: A Common Reader or A Room of One's Own 
George Orwell: 1984
Franz Kafka: "The Metamorphosis" 
Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita 
J. D. Salinger: 9 Stories 
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby 
William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying 
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Chronicle of a Death Foretold 
Isabel Allende: The House of the Spirits, but when was the last time I went out with Isabel? Portrait in Sepia? Or Ines of My Soul? 
Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being 
Elfriede Jelinek: my feeling about Jelinek is complicated 
Toni Morrison: Beloved
Paulo Coelho: I fell in love (sort of), and fell out of love
Haruki Murakami: now enemies, I don't want to talk about it 
Patrick Suskind: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

The Portrait of a Lady: a bit English, a bit Russian

Henry James doesn't only show. He tells. He tells a lot.
What can we say about Isabel Archer after 9 chapters? Unexpectedly pretty, charming. Free-spirited, independent, fond of her own ways. Several incidents show that not only is she not shy but she can also be quite bold and straightforward, sometimes to the point of lacking manners: her arrival at Gardencourt (she plays with the dog and comfortably talks to people she has never met, staying where she is, and doesn't come to greet Mr Touchett), her 1st meeting with Mrs Touchett ("you must be our crazy Aunt Lydia!")...
In some parts Isabel's naturalness is reminiscent of James's other American girls. In some ways, she resembles Gwendolen Harleth (her charm, her way of talking, her illusion- "She had no talent for expression and too little of the consciousness of genius; she only had a general idea that people were right when they treated her as if she were rather superior", her ambition "She had a theory that it was only under this provision life was worth living; that one should be one of the best, should be conscious of a fine organisation (she couldn't help knowing her organisation was fine), should move in a realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic", ...); in some ways, she is like Dorothea Brooke ("most girls are horridly ignorant", "I'm said to have many theories", "great passion for knowledge"...) More interestingly, Isabel has the traits that make one realise how similar Dorothea and Gwendolen are: all 3 are young and inexperienced, all 3 are narrow, all 3 are ambitious and not content with an ordinary life, all 3 strike others as different from most girls, all 3 believe in their own superiority (even Dorothea), all 3 are self-willed, etc.
The narrator says:

"Altogether, with her meagre knowledge, her inflated ideals, her confidence at once innocent and dogmatic, her temper at once exacting and indulgent, her mixture of curiosity and fastidiousness, of vivacity and indifference, her desire to look very well and to be if possible even better, her determination to see, to try, to know, her combination of the delicate, desultory, flame-like spirit and the eager and personal creature of conditions: she would be an easy victim of scientific criticism if she were not intended to awaken on the reader's part an impulse more tender and more purely expectant."

That summing-up of Isabel fits Gwendolen perfectly, and to some extent, Dorothea. Isabel is an American Gwendolen mixed with Dorothea.
Speaking of the writing, James now doesn't make me think of Jane Austen or George Eliot, to whom I've seen a few people compare him. He feels like an American Turgenev. The Portrait of a Lady feels like a Turgenev novel with English names. Positively, I'm thinking of the coherence, symmetry and balance, the harmony and control, the economy, the withdrawal of the author, the presentation of incidents and people as they are, the quiet tone, the serenity, the subtlety and suggestion of something deeper, larger, etc. Negatively, I'm afraid that there is no fall but there is no rise either. The writing is generally good. There is irony. There is humour. Now and then some passages, some phrases, some words are particularly delightful. Take this line about the Misses Molyneux: 

"Their friendliness was great, so great that they were almost embarrassed to show it..."

Or this passage about the journalist Henrietta Stackpole: 

"She rustled, she shimmered, in fresh, dove-coloured draperies, and Ralph saw at a glance that she was as crisp and new and comprehensive as a first issue before the folding. From top to toe she had probably no misprint. She spoke in a clear, high voice—a voice not rich but loud; yet after she had taken her place with her companions in Mr. Touchett's carriage she struck him as not all in the large type, the type of horrid "headings," that he had expected." 

But the book in general doesn't overwhelm, doesn't evoke intense emotions, doesn't cause strong admiration, but that of course is the impression of 9 chapters and I may feel differently later. I suppose it's the kind of writing that must be taken slowly, and our appreciation also comes slowly.

Anglicise Russian names! Anglicise them all!

European languages, you see, can have different variants of the same names, like Natasha in Russian is Natalie in French, Pyotr in Russian is Peter in English and Pierre in French, Katherine in English is Katerina in Russian...*
And we've got Leo Tolstoy**. So I'm thinking, what if we replace the names of some Russian authors with their English equivalents, just for fun?***
Consider Theodore Dostoyevsky
Michael Lermontov
Nicholas Gogol
John Turgenev
Anthony Chekhov
Nicholas Leskov
John Goncharov
John Bunin
Michael Bulgakov
Michael Sholokhov
Andrew Platonov
...
Ridiculous? 





*: Personally I don't like the Maudes' decision to change Nikolai into Nicholas, Andrei into Andrew, Marya into Mary, etc. Why should anyone do that? Just to make the names easier? Luckily they keep Natasha. Don't you dare to replace Natasha with anything! Don't you dare! 
**: You probably have noticed my stubborn insistence on saying Lev Tolstoy. I do so out of habit- in VN, because of the relations with the Soviet Union, people translated Russian works directly from the Russian originals and nobody ever called him Leo Tolstoy. Also, the name Leo makes me think of Leonardo da Vinci and Leonardo DiCaprio. And who knows if there's any other reason. 
***: I'm not really questioning the use of the name Leo Tolstoy as some people do here and there in the internet. It's his choice. I'm just being silly. 

On Charlotte Bronte, and her heroines

Some writers, such as Chekhov, Turgenev, Jane Austen..., keep themselves detached, hidden from view. To quote them, one must always be careful- often, their personal opinions are not on the page. Some writers are also objective, presenting things and characters as they are without letting private feelings interfere with their art, but unlike the aforementioned, have too strong a personality to be invisible. Tolstoy is an example. Or Flaubert. And there are writers like Charlotte Bronte, whose overpowering personality can be felt on every page. She brings herself not only into the narrator, but sometimes makes characters her mouthpieces. We hear her, now and then, in Jane Eyre, in Lucy Snowe, in Shirley Keeldar, in Caroline Helstone, even in Rose Yorke, Mrs Pryor... We feel her presence everywhere, even in the descriptions of nature, for she tends to use nature to convey the emotions and passions of her characters that cannot be expressed with mere words, which very often seem to echo her own feelings.
And yet, in spite of all shortcomings, there are great compensations- no, great merits. Charlotte Bronte is no realist- her novels transport readers to a different world, a fascinating world created solely by her imagination. Charlotte Bronte doesn't patiently observe and record people's manners- rather, it seems like she creates characters out of her own mind, and breathes life into them. They might speak awkwardly, but their rich inner lives and the images the author depicts give them a convincingness, a vivid existence. I can see Jane Eyre before me. I can see Lucy Snowe. I can now see Shirley Keeldar and Caroline Helstone. Shirley is proof that even though in Jane and Lucy, Charlotte Bronte incorporates much of her own personality, experience and suffering, as a governess and as a teacher respectively, she can also write about characters that aren't images of herself. Caroline resembles Jane and Lucy in her quietness and introversion and love for literature, but we cannot find in her the strength and endurance of Jane and Lucy, because she's still young and inexperienced, still romantic, a bit naive, apparently unaware of the hardships of the world, which can be seen most clearly in her conversation with Mrs Yorke about a mother's life. Her insistence on becoming a governess as an escape from broken-heartedness, in an unready, unprepared state, shows both her innocence and her mental weakness- not only is she rather withdrawn, passive, even submissive, but she also lacks independence and strength and perhaps a rich inner world to deal with a disappointment in love. 1st she wants an escape. Later she gets seriously sick. Things like this don't happen to Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, who are more like stoics. At the same time, it feels like Caroline's life is empty, until Shirley appears. 
Shirley, like Jane and Lucy, is strong-willed, independent and self-determined. Like them, she loves literature and poetry and nature, and has a rich imagination. Like them, she voices Charlotte Bronte's indignation at the gender inequality of society. The similarity, I suppose, ends there. Her social position and wealth give her advantages and freedom, she can do anything as she pleases, including doing business, talking politics, making use of her money to help others. More than that, she has charm and vivacity, without any of the coquettishness and affectation of many girls in wealthy families. She has a man's name and a man's job, and takes no interest in "feminine" things such as dressing up, going to parties, being coquettish, etc. Charm doesn't sound like Bronte, nor does vivacity- the images we often have in mind, hearing Charlotte Bronte's name, are often of young women in black or grey, working hard to earn their own living, stoically accepting and enduring hardships, keeping feelings within themselves though sometimes they may have an outburst. But here we have Shirley, who is sociable and charming and well-liked and vivacious. She stands in contrast to Caroline's timidity and passivity, she influences people and galvanises them. The easiest example is Caroline, who changes and becomes more active, more open, because of Shirley and starts doing things she wouldn't do without Shirley. Shirley also influences Mr Helstone for instance, who generally doesn't have high opinions of women and who nevertheless follows her and takes part in her project. 
Some people may find Shirley too ideal and thus unrealistic, but she's not so perfect. She does have quite a temper and a few times seems a bit tempestuous, such as when she gets angry at Mrs Pryor after the attack of the mill, and later apologises. I think, there seem to be 2 persons within Shirley, she has another side in her, a childlike side. She can also be proud. 
In spite of all the drawbacks, the characters appear vividly. Charlotte Bronte even makes readers want to be friends with Caroline, or Shirley, or both. 
To get back to the point I tried to make at the beginning of this post, Charlotte Bronte's personality is all over the pages, I think we can feel fascinated by her novels when we are drawn to the author herself, her fascinating, overpowering personality, her Romantic soul, her refusal to stay within bounds (that is, we must accept her limitations and faults). When readers don't feel that way about Charlotte Bronte, I guess the novels don't give them much. 

Russian Literature Challenge 2014: wrap-up

http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/04/russian-literature-2014-im-participating.html

I managed 11 books, or 12 if Pnin counts. Level 3. 

1/ Notes from Underground (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) 
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/03/notes-from-underground-fragmentary.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/03/finish-reading-notes-from-underground.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/05/notes-from-underetasjen.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/05/dostoyevskys-underground-man-on-reason.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/bumping-back-on-notes-from-underground.html

2/ Chekhov's 40 Stories (Anton Chekhov) 
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/03/no-phone-journal-entry-4-with-thoughts.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/03/more-on-chekhovs-endings.html

3/ Fathers and Sons (Ivan Turgenev)
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-few-lines-on-ivan-turgenev.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/03/on-bazarov-1st-russian-literary-nihilist.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/03/on-virginia-woolf-on-turgenev.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/03/fathers-and-sons.html
I also read about half of A Hunter's Sketches: 
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/08/on-turgenev-and-some-other-russians.html

4/ Lev Tolstoy's Short Fiction- Norton Critical edition, which includes The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Family Happiness 
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/03/notes-on-death-of-ivan-ilyich.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/03/we-all-must-die.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/04/sevastopol-in-december-and-sevastopol.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/05/god-sees-truth-but-waits.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/05/3-pieces-by-tolstoy.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/master-and-man-tolstoy.html

5/ War and Peace (Lev Tolstoy)
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/lots-of-smiles.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/w-p-katerinas-3-smiles.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/lots-of-crying.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/more-on-smiles-in-war-and-peace.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/prince-vasily-kuragin.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-male-characters-in-war-and-peace.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/is-war-and-peace-novel.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/an-affair-and-duel.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/pierre-bezukhov-and-dolokhov.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/w-meaning-of-life.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/berg-vera-men-women.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/in-this-day-and-age.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/andrey-and-natasha.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-other-side-of-old-prince-bolkonsky.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/w-self-assurance-of-different-peoples.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/06/nikolay-marya-sonya-natasha.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/07/war-and-peace-volume-iii.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/07/3-deaths.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/07/blog-post.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-philosophical-part-in-war-and-peace.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/07/concluding-notes-on-war-and-peace.html

6/ Memoirs from the House of the Dead (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/07/free-will-tolstoy-and-dostoyevsky.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/08/tyranny-and-force-of-habit.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/08/dostoyevskys-prison-reminds-me-of-my.html

7/ Nikolai Leskov: Selected Tales
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/08/we-need-to-talk-about-leskov.html

8/ Dead Souls (Nikolai Gogol)
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-dead-souls-of-dead-souls.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/12/dead-souls-our-hero-was-very-much.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/12/was-gogol-gay-simon-karlinsky-thinks-so.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/12/ivan-ivanovich-ivanova-characters-and.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/12/on-volume-2-of-dead-souls-gogol-and.html

9/ The Overcoat and Other Short Stories (Nikolai Gogol)- Dover Thrift edition, including "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich", "The Nose" and "The Overcoat"
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/12/4-gogol-stories.html

10/ A Hero of Our Time (Mikhail Lermontov)
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-hero-of-our-time.html

11/ Rudin (Ivan Turgenev)
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/01/rudin.html

12/ Pnin (Vladimir Nabokov)- if it counts
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/08/laughing-with-nabokov-at-dostoyevsky.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/08/nabokov-and-football.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-sadness-of-pnin.html
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/08/notesfromzembla-on-pnin.html

I also read the correspondence between Flaubert and Turgenev: 
http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/11/reading-flauberts-correspondence.html
Articles and essays I've read about Russian literature, such as those by Virginia Woolf, Nabokov, James Wood... are not included here. 

The Russian giants not only have vision, depth, complexity and genius but are also revolutionary and ahead of their time. Take Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground is 1 of the 1st existentialist works. Tolstoy's War and Peace is not seen as a novel but many postmodern novels, in the same way, also transcend genres such as The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Book of Daniel, etc. Gogol is absurd and modernist long before modernism, paving the way for authors such as Kafka. Chekhov's against conventions, against unrealistic conclusive endings. Lermontov successfully creates a mingling of voices and perspectives (whereas years later in England, Anne Bronte aims for the same effect in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall but goes for a poor method and structure- making the whole novel a letter and placing a diary in it). 
Overall, it has been a good year. None of these books disappointed. If I have to choose only 5 favourites among these, they are War and Peace, Dead Souls, Notes from Underground, A Hero of Our Time and Fathers and Sons (chosen with difficulty and lots of wavering- Pnin is left out because it's originally written in English). 
I'm also glad that after Nabokov, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, I've discovered some other great writers of Russian literature. Especially grateful for Gogol and Lermontov. 
Looking forward to an interesting year with Norwegian literature*.



*: I don't have high expectations, but we'll see. Amaze me. 

Rudin

I finished reading Turgenev's Rudin (trans. David McDuff) some time around Christmas- confused and busy, I didn't know what to write. Even now I don't know how to approach this novel and how to feel about it. 
The image of a superfluous man, an intelligent, sensitive man without a will, without determination, without a purpose, is more vivid and lively in Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time and Flaubert's Sentimental Education, but this comparison is probably unfair for Rudin. To dismiss it as a 1st novel, as something seems to be lacking, is perhaps also unfair for Turgenev. The fault is apparently mine, I don't get Rudin, and shouldn't write about it. 
1 of the issues I have is with the character of Rudin, who is meant to be an intelligent, well-educated, eloquent man, whose chief flaw is inaction, idleness. He lives off other people's money, achieves nothing and doesn't make use of his abilities. His intelligence and knowledge are seen very clearly in his discussions with the empty-headed Pigasov, especially when Rudin 1st appears in the novel, but lots of times, for me, he doesn't sound intellectual, but empty, pretentious, banal, mostly when he talks to Natalya. Or is that how Turgenev wants readers to see Rudin? What bothers me more: it's implied that Rudin with his passive, inactive tendency is set against Natalya, who is stronger in will. She urges him to work, to be useful. However, their last conversation, after the mother knows about their relationship, produces a different effect- because I see Rudin as not only inactive and idle but also pretentious and unreliable (he's not even certain of his feelings for Natalya), she's mistaken to expect much from him, and her surprise at his decision to submit shows naivete and something like an immature rebellion rather than a strong will or anything admirable. Her mother indeed underestimates her and fails to understand her, but she's not entirely wrong about Rudin. What does Natalya expect him to do? 
In any case, I should stop here. This post only proves what I already wrote at the beginning: I don't get Rudin. 

A Hero of Our Time

Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin, the "hero" of the story, at the beginning makes me think of Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park. Charismatic, vain, selfish, idle, hedonistic, empty, heartless, amoral, he also likes to flirt, to toy with women's feelings, and does everything until he achieves his aim. Another similarity is that, even though they tend not to ponder over their actions and examine their wrongdoings to improve themselves and tend to be restless and easily get bored, they both are intelligent and knowledgeable. 
However, if Henry is kept in a distance and we see him through Fanny's eyes and the descriptions of the author, we see Pechorin 1st in the words of Maxim Maximych and the 1st narrator of A Hero of Our Time, a young Russian officer travelling through the Caucasus mountains, and later come close to Pechorin, reading his diary, entering his mind, following his thoughts. This is the fascinating part. Pechorin can be unprincipled, can be selfish to the point of cruelty, but he's not unobservant. He sees everything, sees through everyone. Pride, pretentiousness, hypocrisy, naivete under a mask of coolness, forced laughter, disguised fear...- nothing escapes his sharp eyes, because of this, he often achieves his purposes, but also because of this, all bores him and he cannot truly be friends with anyone, or truly love anyone, until Bela's last moments.
In the later part of the novel, Pechorin is depicted as something like a step to Bazarov. It's another side, not inconsistency. Like a nihilist, he has no system, attaches no importance to anything and has no fear, as though he has no conviction but that he, like everyone, shall die. He's also cold and rational and analytical, at least that's how he sees himself and how he wants to be perceived. As I've written before, in the posts about Fathers and Sons, Bazarov is not as cold and detached as he thinks he is. Pechorin is similar.
Take the scene of the duel, which, I think, is 1 of the best scenes in Russian literature. Pechorin not only ignores Werther's warning but even chooses a dangerous spot, his calmness is terrifying. His fearlessness is a mixture of pride and an indifference to all things, even his own death, and he doesn't care whether or not he dies because deep down inside he despises himself and does suffer, though he doesn't want to show it. He does have self-reflection, and acute self-awareness- what he lacks is a sense of purpose and the will to improve himself and live a better life. His life is a cycle of doing wrong things and despising himself and doing wrong things again and so on. In this scene, he, at 1st, only intends to ridicule and humiliate Grushnitsky, expose his pretentiousness and cowardliness and make Grushnitsky's scheme backfire. Killing Grushnitsky isn't in his mind, but neither does he think that that pale, trembling, weak-kneed guy wants to kill him, until Grushnitsky deliberately and determinedly shoots Pechorin in the leg where Pechorin almost topples and falls off the edge. 

"... To this day I have tried to explain to myself the emotion that then surged in my breast: it was the vexation of injured vanity, and contempt, and wrath born of the realisation that this man who was now eyeing me so coolly, with such calm insolence, 2 minutes before had sought to kill me like a dog without endangering himself in the slightest, for had I been wounded a little more severely in the leg I would certainly have toppled over the cliff. I looked him squarely in the face for a few minutes, trying to detect the slightest sign of repentance. Instead I thought I saw him suppressing a smile..." 

(trans. Martin Parker)
His action now is not one of cool heartlessness, but of injured vanity and anger. Saying "Finita la comedia!" is only a way of concealing from others how heated and unstable he is at the moment. 

"As I came down the path I saw Grushnitsky's blood-stained corpse between the clefts in the rocks. Involuntarily I closed my eyes. Untying my horse, I set out for home at a walking pace. My heart was heavy within me. The sun seemed to have lost its brilliance and its rays did not warm me. Before reaching the settlement I turned into a gorge on my right. I could not have endured to see anyone just then; I wanted to be alone..." 

This is similar to the scene after Bela's death, as told by Maxim Maximych at the beginning of the novel: 

"... I led Pechorin out of the room, and then we walked on the fort wall, pacing back and forth side by side for a long while without uttering a word, arms crossed behind our backs. It angered me to detect no sign of emotion on his face, for in his place I should have died of grief. Finally, he sat down on the ground in the shade and began to trace some design in the sand with a stick. I began to speak, wishing to console him, more for the sake of good form than anything else, you know, whereupon he looked up and laughed... That laughed sent cold shivers running up and down my spine." 

Pechorin's so used to hiding his emotions, feigning strength and indifference, and coolly analysing everything, including his despicable actions, that he's no longer able to articulate and express his emotions. They accumulate, and 1 day he explodes. 
(Now this sounds like Dolokhov in War and Peace). 




_______________________________________________


Another great book. Lermontov creates such as realistically complex and self-contradictory character, it's wonderful. None of the Russian writers I read this year disappoints. 

Reading Flaubert's correspondence

Lately I've been reading Flaubert's correspondence with Turgenev, and with George Sand.
The letters with Turgenev do say something about Flaubert's personality, life and aesthetic views, and explain the close friendship between these 2 writers. They have the same views on life, literature and politics, the same pessimism and melancholy, the same disbelief in the possibility of happiness, the same principle of an impersonal style (of withholding comments and keeping their personal beliefs out of their novels), the same focus on style and details, the same attitude towards politics (follow what's going on, without belonging to a party or a group) and the same refusal to have any system. They have the same admiration, with reservations, for Tolstoy, for instance. And when Flaubert's attacked on various sides for Sentimental Education, Turgenev's 1 of the few who see its worth.
At the same time these letters show some differences between the 2. Flaubert's "the hermit of Croisset", with a small circle of friends, whereas Turgenev's the man of society, so Flaubert's more emotionally dependent and sometimes even sulky like a child. He's also more pessimistic- he has a gloomy view on everything, seeing life as futile and people as stupid, but Turgenev consoles him that it's more like a symptom of old age.
However, the Flaubert- George Sand letters are fascinating, because they're exchanges of ideas and feelings between 2 very different persons. They discuss, they debate, they give each other advice besides affection and consolation, they explain themselves and try to convince each other. As Virginia Woolf puts it, "She brings out all his peculiar qualities so finely that no autobiography could tell so much as he tells almost unconsciously". For most of the time reading the correspondence, I've felt more drawn to George Sand, for her love of life and acceptance of everything in spite of the negative bits. Flaubert's pessimism and disdain, bordering on cynicism and misanthropy, can be frustrating, his scorn for the mass and his disbelief in democracy and universal suffrage can be frustrating, and his ceaseless lamentations over the labour of writing can get on one's nerves. George Sand apparently feels the same about his attitudes. I can't help feeling, as I think of Tolstoy, that perhaps this pessimism makes Flaubert limited in some ways, and inferior to Tolstoy. 
As I read on, I have better understanding of his negativity. He sees through pretensions and notices all the stupidity around him. He refuses to rise above human folly and the silliness of others, as he says George Sand does, but stares at everything, reads everything, avoids nothing- the more he reads about history and science and numerous books, the more convinced he is of the barbarism and stupidity of people that will not change- he takes in everything and lets it all engulf him so that he sinks into sadness and melancholy. Understanding his view on the mass, I can also understand why he's against universal suffrage and democracy- of course he's mistaken, but I have hindsight, I know how democracy has turned out in spite of the early scepticism, and more importantly, unlike a lot of people, I have known both dictatorship and democracy, and Flaubert doesn't (not that I have any illusion about democracy- it's not without faults, but it's the best thing we've ever had). I read the letters and see Flaubert as a character on the pages, and seeing him in context, in his place and time, can sympathise with his views and see why he has such thoughts. These letters shed some light on Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education. 
Fascinating stuff.

Concluding post on Sentimental Education

In his introduction of Sentimental Education, Robert Baldick wrote:

"The public still wants works which encourage and exalt its illusions, and consequently many readers are still bound to find Sentimental Education distasteful and even abhorrent. Politicians of every party loathe the book, since it shows up the politics of Right and Left, of the 20th century as much as of the 19th, with impartial ferocity and disgust; young people shy away from it, because it exposes the hollowness and fragility of their ideals; while women regard it with suspicion and dislike, on account of its insidious devaluation of the power of love..."

Such reactions are understandable- Madame Bovary, when hated, is hated for the same reasons. Who wants to find themselves in Emma Bovary, or Frédéric Moreau? Flaubert is not Tolstoy, who has affection and sympathy for all of his characters and who, in War and Peace as well as in his more tragic work Anna Karenina, makes one love life in all of its manifestations. The sadness and disappointment makes Flaubert closer in temperament to Turgenev, but Flaubert doesn't give Hussonnet, Deslauriers and Sénécal the kind of love that Turgenev has for Bazarov. Perhaps one may even argue that Dostoyevsky, in spite of his exploration of evil, at least believes in hope and redemption and free will, whereas no sense of hope or redemption can be found in Flaubert. It's nothing, nothing, nothing. He's a vivisectionist, and as he wanted to become, a demoraliser, cutting open his characters, in both novels, and putting them on display and presenting the horrible, cruel, naked reality, crushing all sentimental dreams and illusions. But if in Madame Bovary, the focus in on a few provincial people, a few philistines, such as Emma Bovary, Léon and Homais, in Sentimental Education, it's the whole generation and the whole society that Flaubert is ridiculing and feeling disgusted with. It's a book of disappointment, of emptiness, of inactive passion, of purposeless existence, of failed dreams, of crushed illusions, of the futility of life. 
2 years ago, after reading Madame Bovary, I distanced myself from Flaubert in spite of my immense admiration for the novel, and haven't read any other of his works till now. I admired him, esteemed him highly and held him in a respectful distance, but now I feel different, and love Sentimental Education, personally. Perhaps the 2 novels are different- both have irony, both are dissection of sentimentalism, philistinism and stupidity, but while the mockery in Madame Bovary seems harsh, cruel and fused with contempt, that in Sentimental Education is tinged with disappointment and profound sadness. Or maybe it's me that has changed- the past 2 years with some experiences of activism (for lack of a better word) have crushed some of my illusions, and though I don't generally see myself as a pessimist, my pessimism about the state of VN, about Viet people, about pro-democracy activists and bloggers, do help understand the sadness and despair of Flaubert, which I probably wouldn't have known, had I read Sentimental Education in 2009 or 2010, when I had just entered that world. A man fails to recognise great works but owns a newspaper about theatre and then uses it to spread slander as a revenge, a man takes his friend's legacy for granted and feels that his friend is entitled to give him money, a man speaks loudly of socialism and the masses and worker poets but, once having power, abuses it and sees no individual, a man has great expectations and aspirations but wanders through life aimlessly, political changes take place but only go with chaos and lead to nothing better...- Flaubert's attitude and tone is not arrogance or disdain but more like disillusionment. The novel is even sadder in its last chapters, when Madame Arnoux meets Frédéric again, then leaves, "and that was all"- they never belong to each other and yet we have a feeling that it is better that way, because their love, if pushed any further, could collapse like everything else. 
In the end Robert Baldick notes:

"... Yet for all of the hopes it kills and the illusions it destroys, Flaubert's novel is not a barren, dispiriting work [...] and any reader who is capable, as he was, of accepting both pleasant and unpleasant experiences as an inevitable part of life, and deriving an ironic pleasure from acquiescence in the human condition, will find Sentimental Education a work of profound, mature, satisfying beauty."

I agree. Sentimental Education may not be everyone's favourite, but it's indeed "a work of profound, mature, satisfying beauty". 

On Turgenev (and some other Russians)

I'm reading Turgenev's A Hunter's Sketches.
Turgenev doesn't have a strong personality like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky or, another favourite Russian author of mine, Nabokov; nor a sharp tongue like Jane Austen, to whom people sometimes compare. His voice is soft, gentle, which easily gets lost among the thunderous voices around him.
But then, can anyone always be in the mood for writers like Tolstoy or Nabokov or Dostoyevsky? I doubt it. Perhaps if you're a Tolstoy aficionado, or a Nabokov fanatic...., but even then I doubt it. There are times when they depress me, force me to question my insignificant, unremarkable life or intimidate me, make me unable to do anything. There are times when they make me feel so tiny, so boring, so talentless and shallow. There are times when I feel embarrassed of being so frivolous and trivial. There are times when, reading them, I yearn for something greater, only to stare hopelessly at my smallness, and despair. There are times when I simply feel tired of their personalities, their voices, their egos. At such moments, Turgenev is a delight- he is gentle and loving (and has what Virginia Woolf calls "saintliness"), his stories have balance, coherence and objectivity with open, inconclusive, lifelike endings that remind one of Chekhov. He doesn't appear to teach us, to dictate our thoughts and emotions, to tell us to respond in a certain way. He accepts life as it is, and depicts it with calmness and some melancholy. His stories are deeply moving in their humanity, beauty and simplicity. 
An enjoyable book. 
Now I'm going to get back to it.