Unfortunately, I cannot say the same of
my father's attitude toward Turgenieff.
In this, too, the want of dispassionateness in his nature
revealed itself. Personal relations prevented him from being
objective.
In 1867, apropos of Turgenieff's "Smoke," which had
just appeared, he wrote to Fet:
There is hardly any love of anything in "Smoke" and hardly any
poetry. The only thing it shows love for is light and playful
adultery, and for that reason the poetry of the story is repulsive.
. . . I am timid in expressing this opinion, because I cannot form
a sober judgment about an author whose personality I dislike.
In 1865, before the final breach with Turgenieff, he wrote,
again to Fet: "I do not like 'Enough'! A personal subjective
treatment is never good unless it is full of life and passion; but
the subjectivity in this case is full of lifeless suffering.
In the autumn of 1883, after Turgenieff's death, when
the family had gone into Moscow for the winter, my father stayed at
Yasnaya Polyana alone, with Agafya
Mikhailovna, and set earnestly about reading through all
Turgenieff's works.
This is what he wrote to my mother at the time:
I am always thinking about Turgenieff. I am intensely
fond of him, and sorry for him, and do nothing but read him. I
live entirely with him.
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