LIZA. By ,Ivin Sergeyevitch Turgenief. There are several translations for the original title of this novel, Gnyezd6> —'A Nest of Nobles,' A Nobleman's Nest,> 'A House of Gentlefolk.) The title is evi dently more or less symbolical, Nest' not referring to the residence of any particular gentleman or nobleman. The action passes mainly in the city home where Liza lives with her worldly-minded mother and her shrewish tempered great-aunt. The principal character, Lavretsky, occupies only for a brief time a small 'country-house which had belonged to his father's sister. The preliminary chapters are largely devoted to tracing the heredity of the various actors in the drama and portray selfish men and women of an earlier genera tion and their environment. When these ex planations have been cleared away and one understands the hidden forces of relentless cir cumstances, the development of the simple yet unexpected complication of the plot is con ducted with a masterly knowledge of human nature. The solution of the tragedy of dis appointed love is seen to be in exact accord ance with the psychology of the persons in volved.
Lizavieta Mikhailovna Kaletina, known as Liza, is the daughter of a government official, stubborn and harsh, who died when she was 10 years of age, leaving a large property in the hands of his widow, Marya Dmitrievna, a woman fairly well educated, sentimental and amiable when her will was not crossed. Dur ing her' impressionable childhood Liza was given over to the care of the old nurse, Agifya Vlasievna, who had occupied an eauiv ocal position in her grandfather's household but on the old man's death had become fanat ically devout. Liza's mother made no attempt to offset the influence of those early religious practices. At the beginning of the story Liza is about 20, very pretty, graceful, winning, unselfish and affectionate, °loving everyone in general but no one in particular." When a distant kinsman of the family, Feador Ivano vitch Lavretsky, returns to Russia after a long residence abroad, she considers it her duty to try to reconcile him with his wife, whom he had repudiated on account of her immoral relations with a Frenchman. Lavretsky is no longer young; but he is still attractive and Turgenief evidently did his best to depict him as a sympathetic type of the Russian gentle man, in spite of his birth (his mother had been a servant maid, first seduced and then hastily married against his tyrannical grand lather's wishes). Notwithstanding a one-sided and distorted education, Lavretsky has done his best to remedy the defects in his training and is now ready to take up his duties as benefactor to his serfs and as manager of his large estates. While studying at the univer sity he had married Varvara Pavlovna Kora buina, the beautiful daughter of a general who had been disgraced by reason of certain dis honest practices. She was unworthy of him
and when he found proofs of her unfaith fulness, he settled a pension on her and left her. He is immediately attracted by Liza, whom her mother wishes to marry to Vladimir Nikolayevitch Panshin, a good-looking young official who had been sent to the provincial town of 0— (evidently intended to mean Orel where Turgenief was born). Panshin is the type of the brilliant and superficial Russian, half-educated after the Western mode, speaks several languages, plays the piano, composes sentimental songs, sketches with a clever hand, acts well in private theatricals and- considers any woman as legitimate game. He and La vretsky are admirably contrasted. When Liza, at the fateful moment before she has made up her mind to accept Panshin's offer, reads the newspaper report of Varvara Pavlovna's death, she confesses her love for Lavretsky. They have one hour of happiness; then Fate interposes. Lavretsky's wife is not dead: she arrives at Lavretsky's house with her little daughter. Liza begs Lavretsky to forgive Var vara Pivlovna and she herself follows the ex ample of her old nurse and takes refuge in a nunnery in a distant part of Russia. Varvira Pavlovna is the exact antithesis of Liza: she is beautiful but false. She immediately be gins a new intrigue with Panshin, and again Lavretsky finds himself alone. Eight years later he revisits the house where Liza had lived. °The Nest" still belongs to the family though all the old people are dead; a new generation is living there. He • catches a glimpse of their gaieties; he sees the bench on which he and Liza had sat in the bliss of their love con fessed; he touches the piano: ea faint pure tone rings out and trembles in his heart.* He realizes that he had ceased to think of his own happiness; his mind is calm but he is old, old in body and in soul; but he is not unhappy; breathing a silent blessing on youth, he turns away °with sadness yet without envy" and drives slowly to his deserted home.
(Liza) belongs to a Russia vastly different from that of our day. The age in which it was written has passed, but the pictures which it gives of the period will always be treasured by mankind. It was first published in 1858, just before the Crimean War and the libera tion of the serfs, and reflects the ideas that were beginning to ferment in Russia toward the end of the reign of Nicholas I. It was translated into. English by W. R. S. Ralston and published in 1869 (new ed., 1884). It was included in a five-volume translation of Tur genief's masterpieces in 1889. It is included in the complete edition of Turgenief translated by Mrs. Constance Garnett and it makes the fourth volume of the complete works of Tur genief's novels translated by Miss Isabel F. Hapgood, published in 1903.