Virgin Soil by Ivan Turgenev

VIRGIN SOIL
Ivan Turgenev
A critical paper by
George A. Weimer IV

Virgin Soil.  Here is a novel that is definitely age-dependent and in more ways than one.  I read it, enjoyed much of it, but often could not avoid asking myself how differently would I react if I read it at 24 years of age instead of 64?  For what are we reading here but a story about some youthful, incurable, revolutionary romantics?  Our story begins in the poverty-themed apartment of one Alexyei Dmitrievitch Nezhdanoff, “the Russian Hamlet,” as Pakhlin calls him, the “the Russian Mephistopheles,” as Nezhdanoff titles him.  We are also introduced to Miss Musharin and Ostrodumoff in the tiny apartment in Petersburg.  Their conversations touches on the “Cause” which is to somehow transform Russia into a more modern, more efficient, less backward country which is now full of undeserving and ignoble nobles and uninspired peasants.  Unannounced, in walks one of these ignoble nobles, the “liberal” Sipyagin who with his ultra-charming wife, Valentina Mikhailovna, represent the nobility.  Living with them is their niece Marianna, the central love interest of the three leading male characters on the revolutionary side.  Other characters are quickly introduced, such as the incredibly well-balanced, cool, calm and collected mechanical engineer and plant manager, Solomin, the ever-irritating snit and classically ignoble noble,  Kallomyeitzeff and the ultra-dedicated Markeloff. We meet the aged and incredibly odd long-married couple, Fimushka and Fomushka who suggest horror films to come, a Russian Vaudeville act in the making.

The story itself is simple.  A group of mostly younger people, including Nezhdanoff, are hoping for and helping a revolution to get started that seemingly nobody else wants – peasants or nobility.  Marianna moves through the book as the very picture of young, feminine beauty who is first beloved by Markeloff, then Nezhdanoff, and finally ends up marrying the ultimate good provider Solomin.

The novel serves as a discussion platform for the various social and political issues of the day.  Sipyagin is considered sympathetic to some of these issues.  He hires the “Russian Hamlet” to tutor his young (9) son, Kolya.  The drama begins.  Marianne is entranced by Nezhdanoff and they fall into what she thinks is love, but he later calls only duty.  While much discussion follows amongst all the characters, the band of “revolutionaries” actually does pass out some pamphlets and talk up a revolt with the local peasantry.

The results of this children’s crusade?  Nezhdanoff gets wretchedly drunk. The peasants, instead of storming some palace, beat up Markeloff and take him to the police.  He does time while Nezhdanoff commits suicide, Werther style, and Solomin and Marianna marry.  He creates his own factory and, one can guess, they live well enough to visit more advanced countries now and then.

The issues that concern Turgenev seem clear, but his opinions of the various socialists ideas wafting into the drawing rooms and hovels of Russia are presented as hopelessly idealistic.  When we first approach the estate of Sipyagin we enter a Greek-style façade and an elegant, servant-filled room filled with taste and wealth and populated by the Sipyagins who move in the highest social circles.  The contrast between their lives and the lives of the “revolutionaries” in their cramped apartments or the peasants who live in the most crude conditions almost hits one too hard.  While the author seems to be saying nothing negative about the beauty of some homes, he is uncomfortable, like many of his characters, with the fact that only a few live so.  Yet, Turgenev’s opinion about Russia’s great social problems does not seem to reflect the ideas embraced by some of his characters.  You can almost feel the author’s ambivalence and his own battle in his own mind about what to do to “modernize” the huge nation.  He implies that one might study British industry and so – Solomin, the wisest of the people in Virgin Soil, marches off with Marianna as the couple of the future, an engineer and his partner and wife.  Not quite what happened, as we now know, but considering what the Russian people went through after the real revolutionaries took over, it’s a start.

The story is reprieved by Pakhlin and Miss Mashurin at the end and we leave Anonymous Russia to times to come.

As I noted, I often thought while reading this that if I were reading it as a young person, I would be much more moved, much more accepting perhaps of the silent film feeling the book brought to me.  Would I laugh out loud at Fimoushka and Fomoushka  40 years ago?  Would I have found the “simple” clothing that Nezhdanoff and Marianna put on – gifts from Tatyana – comic, silly, pathetic, touching?

Would I have reflected in reading this book 40 years ago, that some of these characters were similar to young, well off, American white suburban liberals of the 60s assuming African-American manners and styles?  Liberal chic a la Russe?   In fact, I thought of Holden Caulfield now and then as Nezhdanoff and Markeloff took turns finding the most “phonies” in their worlds.

Or, is Turgenev wiser than most and presenting a story more about human nature than ideology?  When Nezhdanoff confesses he does not believe in the “cause,” and shoots himself under the apple tree, is Turgenev suggesting that the theme of his book is the kaleidescope of human relations, their universality up and down the social scale?

This is a novel of sadness and doom indeed – for nearly all the characters save Marianna and Solomin who apparently have a future.  All the others seem to have none or are fated to stay right where they are which is to say frustrated and unhappy.

A good book?  I think so.  A great book?  It has great parts, great scenes, some very colorful conversations and lots of those marvelous Russian proverbs.  An enjoyable read?  Yes, I think so.  I read a rather old translation, which did not have nearly the number of footnotes required to bring out the wonderful proverbial Russian language.

All in all, I think Turgenev is saying in Virgin Soil that children starting revolutions means comedy at best and disaster at worst. The idealism he describes in Virgin Soil is admirable, even to some of the antagonists in this novel. The various commitments and loves in the book are touching and sometimes moving. But all in all, the book begins with a quote about farming (in Russia we must assume) and ends up with successful modern manufacturing as possibly the country’s only proper hope.  I believe that is still the case.

Questions for discusion

1. This book makes various references to Hamlet. In fact, Nezhdanoff is called the “Russian Hamlet.” Later, near the end of the novel, late in chapter 36, he says, “I was born out of joint” as Hamlet says himself…”Time is out of joint.” Turgenev’s heroes are sometimes called quixotic (strong but headstrong) or Hamlet-like, (intelligent but weak), as was Nezhdanoff. Within the framework of the novel, is Nezhdanoff’s end inevitable and justified in a literary sense?  

2. What does the author seem to be saying about revolution in general and Russian revolutionary efforts in particular?  What might he say about the revolution injected into Russia by Lenin? Of Russia today? What is his point in terms of the comparisons of Russian and British industry? Is the message: “Watch the English and avoid the Germans?”

3. One major theme in the book seems to be identity and how it is formed. Some characters seem to fit their roles; others not. Some none at all and some several. Nezhdanoff has three identity options – at least – and none work for him. (Literature, lover, politics) For another example, in the clothes changing scenes where Marianna and Nezhdonoff don their new outfits. She fits the “simple” look. He doesn’t. And, in some ways, the revolutionaries are trying to change the costumes of the classes yet these same groups (peasants, nobles, burghers, merchants and engineers) find it all odd at best. What is the novel saying about identity, role playing?

4. This last topic flows out of the previous questions. There is a great deal of the grotesque in Virgin Soil. Pakhlin, Fomushka and Fimushka, and several other characters are deformed while others are internally grotesque. Consider Sipyagin’s father the “Danteist.” What is Turgenev saying with these people – about Russia? About people and civilization in general?