Ideals and Reality in Russian Literature

Publisher Marketing: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ... of logic -- this would have been the manner of the political writer -- he conceived it in the shape of images and scenes. Even in his conversation, when he intended to give you an idea of some problem which worried his mind, he used to do it by describing a scene so vividly that it would for ever engrave itself in the memory. This was also a marked trait in his writings. His novels are a successionj>f scenes -- some of them of the most exquisite beauty -- each' of which helps him further _to characterise his heroes. Therefore all his novels are short, and need no_pIptjEo sustain the reader's attention. Those who have been perverted by sensational novel-reading may, of course, be disappointed with a want of sensational episode; but the ordinary intelligent reader feels from the very first pages that he has real and interesting men and women before him, with really human hearts throbbing in them, and he cannot part with the book before he has reached the end and grasped the characters in full. Simplicity of means for accomplishing far-reachingends. -- that chief feature of truly good art -- is felt in everytKing Turgueneff wrote. George Brandes, in his admirable study of Turgueneff (in 'Moderne Geister), the best, the deepest, and the most poetical of all that has been written about the great novelist, makes the following remark: "It is not easy to say quite definitely what makes of Turgueneff an artist of the first rank. . . . That he has in the highest degree the capacity which makes a true poet, of producing living human beings, does not, after all, comprise everything. What makes the reader feel so much his artistic superiority is the concordance one feels between the interest taken by the poet in the person whom he depicts, or...