_A Desperate Character_, 1881


_Pyetushkov_ is the work of a young man of twenty-nine, and its lively,
unstrained realism is so bold, intimate, and delicate as to contradict
the flattering compliment that the French have paid to one another--that
Turgenev had need to dress his art by the aid of French mirrors.

Although _Pyetushkov_ shows us, by a certain open _naivete_ of style,
that a youthful hand is at work, it is the hand of a young master,
carrying out the realism of the 'forties'--that of Gogol, Balzac, and
Dickens--straightway, with finer point, to find a perfect equilibrium
free from any bias or caricature. The whole strength and essence of the
realistic method has been developed in _Pyetushkov_ to its just limits.
The Russians are _instinctive_ realists, and carry the warmth of life
into their pages, which warmth the French seem to lose in clarifying
their impressions and crystallising them in art. _Pyetushkov_ is not
exquisite: it is irresistible. Note how the reader is transported bodily
into Pyetushkov's stuffy room, and how the major fairly boils out of the
two pages he lives in! (pp. 301, 302). That is _realism_ if you like. A
woman will see the point of _Pyetushkov_ very quickly. Onisim and
Vassilissa and the aunt walk and chatter around the stupid Pyetushkov,
and glance at him significantly in a manner that reveals everything
about these people's world. All the servants who appear in the tales in
this volume are hit off so marvellously that one sees the lower-class
world, which is such a mystery to certain refined minds, has no secrets
for Turgenev.

Of a different, and to our taste more fascinating, _genre_ is _The