The best judges of Russian authors must be
Russians. Think of the ridiculous misconceptions about English literature
by first-class foreign critics!... But I am convinced that Mr. Baring goes
too far in his statement of the Russian estimate of Tourgeniev. He says
that educated Russian opinion would no more think of comparing Tourgeniev
with Dostoievsky than educated English opinion would think of comparing
Charlotte Yonge with Charlotte Bronte. This is absurd. Whatever may be
Tourgeniev's general inferiority (and I do not admit it), he was a great
artist and a complete artist. And he was a realist. There is all earth and
heaven between the two Charlottes. One was an artist, the other was an
excellent Christian body who produced stories that have far less relation
to life than Frith's "Derby Day" has to the actual fact and poetry of
Epsom. If Mr. Baring had bracketed Tourgeniev with Charlotte Bronte and
Dostoievsky with the lonely Emily, I should have credited him with a
subtle originality.
About half of the book is given to a straightforward, detailed, homely
account of Dostoievsky, his character, genius, and works. It was very much
wanted in English. I thought I had read all the chief works of the five
great Russian novelists, but last year I came across one of Dostoievsky's,
"The Brothers Karamazov," of which I had not heard.
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