Ivan Turgenev: Virgin Soil

Virgin Soil was the last and the longest novel that Turgenev wrote. The characters, the political and philosophical ideas, the writing style, the tone, all would be familiar to those who have read his earlier works like Fathers and Sons or Rudin. Like so many heroes in his novels, the protagonist of Virgin Soil Nezhdanov is also a "superfluous man" - an educated and over-sensitive young man, a misfit and an outsider, full of self-doubts and hesitations and torn between two poles of aestheticism and political commitment.

In one of his many melancholic and self-critical confessions in the book Nezhdanov says:

How I loathe this irritability, sensitiveness, impressionable- ness, fastidiousness, inherited from my aristocratic father! What right had he to bring me into this world, endowed with qualities quite unsuited to the sphere in which I must live? To create a bird and throw it in the water? An aesthetic amidst filth! A democrat, a lover of the people, yet the very smell of their filthy vodka makes me feel sick!

It is as if he is "possessed" by the idea of populist socialism, the idea that educated people must go to the russian peasantry and incite them to revolt against the Czarist authority. And yet he feels torn about his political commitment. Everything feels vague to him and he can't decide whether he really believes in "the cause." He despises himself for writing poetry which is what comes most naturally to him. There is a wonderful portrait of Marianna, the girl who falls in love with him and shares his political beliefs but more out of her contempt for the rich aristocratic way of life and conventions of society. Turgenev in a real life supported feminist ideas passionately and it shows in the way he creates these female characters. (He was also a good friend of George Sand, the great nineteenth century feminist novelist, alongwith Flaubert.)

Kubla has already written about this book comparing it with Dostoevsky's The Possessed which is very instructive because it dramatizes similar events but the tone and the style of the two books couldn't be more different. It is also interesting to note that Turgenev wrote this book before revolutionaries were apprehended for inciting revolts among workers and peasants in real-life. It was almost like a case of life imitating art. Dostoevsky's novel in contrast was written after the Nechaev affair. He distorts many of the revolutionaries characters, heaping contempt on them and ridiculing their political ideas. Turgenev on the other hand is much more sympathetic and generous even if he is equally pessimistic about their political beliefs.

Like his Fathers and Sons, Virgin Soil was also hugely controversial when it was published. Turgenev faced angry and impatient criticisms from both the left, who felt that he deliberated portrayed Nezhdanov as weak-willed and confused, and the slavophile, Conservative right for obvious reasons since it is obvious from the book that the prevailing status-quo disgusted Turgenev as much as the younger revolutionaries. The epigraph to the book puts the criticisms of the radicals rather succinctly:

"To turn over virgin soil it is necessary to use a deep plough going well into the earth, not a surface plough gliding lightly over the top."--From a Farmer's Notebook.

The reactions to his book in Russia contributed a lot to the bitterness of last few years of Turgenev's life in which he grew more and more pessimistic about Russia's future. Isaiah Berlin's brilliant essay on Turgenev links the reactions to his works to tragic current of russian history itself in which liberal and inclusive political beliefs were crushed and defeated by the extremes.

Some more information in this introduction[pdf] to the nyrb edition of the book