A Reckless Character

A Reckless Character

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Title: A Reckless Character And Other Stories
Author: Ivan Turgenev
Translator: Isabel Hapgood
Release Date: June 6, 2005 [EBook #15994]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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RECKLESS CHARACTER ***

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A RECKLESS CHARACTER
And Other Stories
BY
IVÁN TURGÉNIEFF
Translated from the Russian by ISABEL F. HAPGOOD
NEW YORK, CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 1907.

CONTENTS:

A RECKLESS CHARACTER THE DREAM FATHER ALEXYÉI'S
STORY OLD PORTRAITS THE SONG OF LOVE TRIUMPHANT
CLARA MÍLITCH POEMS IN PROSE ENDNOTES

A RECKLESS CHARACTER[1]
(1881)

I
There were eight of us in the room, and we were discussing
contemporary matters and persons,
"I do not understand these gentlemen!" remarked A.--"They are fellows
of a reckless sort.... Really, desperate.... There has never been anything
of the kind before."
"Yes, there has," put in P., a grey-haired old man, who had been born
about the twenties of the present century;--"there were reckless men in
days gone by also. Some one said of the poet Yázykoff, that he had
enthusiasm which was not directed to anything, an objectless
enthusiasm; and it was much the same with those people--their
recklessness was without an object. But see here, if you will permit me,
I will narrate to you the story of my grandnephew, Mísha Pólteff. It
may serve as a sample of the recklessness of those days."
He made his appearance in God's daylight in the year 1828, I remember,
on his father's ancestral estate, in one of the most remote nooks of a
remote government of the steppes. I still preserve a distinct recollection
of Mísha's father, Andréi Nikoláevitch Pólteff. He was a genuine,
old-fashioned landed proprietor, a pious inhabitant of the steppes,
sufficiently well educated,--according to the standards of that
epoch,--rather crack-brained, if the truth must be told, and subject, in
addition, to epileptic fits.... That also is an old-fashioned malady....
However, Andréi Nikoláevitch's attacks were quiet, and they generally
terminated in a sleep and in a fit of melancholy.--He was kind of heart,
courteous in manner, not devoid of some pomposity: I have always
pictured to myself the Tzar Mikhaíl Feódorovitch as just that sort of a
man.
Andréi Nikoláevitch's whole life flowed past in the punctual discharge
of all the rites established since time immemorial, in strict conformity

with all the customs of ancient-orthodox, Holy-Russian life. He rose
and went to bed, he ate and went to the bath, he waxed merry or
wrathful (he did both the one and the other rarely, it is true), he even
smoked his pipe, he even played cards (two great innovations!), not as
suited his fancy, not after his own fashion, but in accordance with the
rule and tradition handed down from his ancestors, in proper and
dignified style. He himself was tall of stature, of noble mien and
brawny; he had a quiet and rather hoarse voice, as is frequently the case
with virtuous Russians; he was neat about his linen and his clothing,
wore white neckerchiefs and long-skirted coats of snuff-brown hue, but
his noble blood made itself manifest notwithstanding; no one would
have taken him for a priest's son or a merchant! Andréi Nikoláevitch
always knew, in all possible circumstances and encounters, precisely
how he ought to act and exactly what expressions he must employ; he
knew when he ought to take medicine, and what medicine to take,
which symptoms he should heed and which might be disregarded ... in
a word, he knew everything that it was proper to do.... It was as though
he said: "Everything has been foreseen and decreed by the old men--the
only thing is not to devise anything of your own.... And the chief thing
of all is, don't go even as far as the threshold without God's
blessing!"--I am bound to admit that deadly tedium reigned in his house,
in those low-ceiled, warm, dark rooms which so often resounded from
the chanting of vigils and prayer-services,[2] with an odour of incense
and fasting-viands,[3] which almost never left them!
Andréi Nikoláevitch had married, when he was no longer in his first
youth, a poor young noblewoman of the neighbourhood, a very nervous
and sickly person, who had been reared in one of the government
institutes for gentlewomen. She played far from badly on the piano; she
spoke French in boarding-school fashion; she was given to enthusiasm,
and still more addicted to melancholy,