On the Eve | Page 4

but _On the Eve_, of all
the novels, contains perhaps the most instructive political lesson
England can learn. Europe has always had, and most assuredly England
has been over-rich in those alarm-monger critics, watchdogs for ever
baying at Slav cupidity, treachery, intrigue, and so on and so on. It is
useful to have these well-meaning animals on the political premises,
giving noisy tongue whenever the Slav stretches out his long arm and
opens his drowsy eyes, but how rare it is to find a man who can teach
us to interpret a nation's aspirations, to gauge its inner force, its aim, its
inevitability. Turgenev gives us such clues. In the respectful, if slightly
forced, silence that has been imposed by certain recent political events
on the tribe of faithful watchdogs, it may be permitted to one to say,
that whatever England's interest may be in relation to Russia's
development, it is better for us to understand the force of Russian aims,
before we measure our strength against it And a novel, such as On the
Eve, though now nearly forty years old, and to the short-sighted out of
date, reveals in a flash the attitude of the Slav towards his political
destiny. His aspirations may have to slumber through policy or
necessity; they may be distorted or misrepresented, or led astray by
official action, but we confess that for us, On the Eve suggests the

existence of a mighty lake, whose waters, dammed back for a while, are
rising slowly, but are still some way from the brim. How long will it
take to the overflow? Nobody knows; but when the long winter of
Russia's dark internal policy shall be broken up, will the snows, melting
on the mountains, stream south-west, inundating the Valley of the
Danube? Or, as the national poet, Pushkin, has sung, will there be a
pouring of many Slavonian rivulets into the Russian sea, a powerful
attraction of the Slav races towards a common centre to create an era of
peace and development within, whereby Russia may rise free and
rejoicing to face her great destinies? Hard and bitter is the shaping of
nations. Uvar Ivanovitch still fixes his enigmatical stare into the far
distance.
EDWARD GARNETT
January 1895.

THE NAMES OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK
NIKOLA'I [Nicolas] ARTE'MYEVITCH STA'HOV.
A'NNA VASSI'LYEVNA.
ELE'NA [LE'NOTCHKA, Helene] NIKOLA'EVNA.
ZO'YA [Zoe] NIKI'TISHNA MU'LLER.
ANDRE'I PETRO'VITCH BERSE'NYEV.
PA'VEL [Paul] YA'KOVLITCH (or YA'KOVITCH) SHU'BIN.
DMI'TRI NIKANO'ROVITCH (or NIKANO'RITCH) INSA'ROV.
YEGO'R ANDRE'ITCH KURNATO'VSKY.
UVA'R IVA'NOVITCH STA'HOV.
AUGUSTI'NA CHRISTIA'NOVNA.
A'NNUSHKA.
In transcribing the Russian names into English--
a has the sound of a in father. e , , .............a in pane. i , , .............ee.
u , ,............. oo. y is always consonantal except when it is the last letter
of the word. g is always hard.

I
On one of the hottest days of the summer of 1853, in the shade of a tall
lime-tree on the bank of the river Moskva, not far from Kuntsovo, two
young men were lying on the grass. One, who looked about

twenty-three, tall and swarthy, with a sharp and rather crooked nose, a
high forehead, and a restrained smile on his wide mouth, was lying on
his back and gazing meditatively into the distance, his small grey eyes
half closed. The other was lying on his chest, his curly, fair head
propped on his two hands; he, too, was looking away into the distance.
He was three years older than his companion, but seemed much
younger. His moustache was only just growing, and his chin was
covered with a light curly down. There was something childishly pretty,
something attractively delicate, in the small features of his fresh round
face, in his soft brown eyes, lovely pouting lips, and little white hands.
Everything about him was suggestive of the happy light-heartedness of
perfect health and youth--the carelessness, conceit, self-indulgence, and
charm of youth. He used his eyes, and smiled and leaned his head as
boys do who know that people look at them admiringly. He wore a
loose white coat, made like a blouse, a blue kerchief wrapped his
slender throat, and a battered straw hat had been flung on the grass
beside him.
His companion seemed elderly in comparison with him; and no one
would have supposed, from his angular figure, that he too was happy
and enjoying himself. He lay in an awkward attitude; his large
head--wide at the crown and narrower at the base--hung awkwardly on
his long neck; awkwardness was expressed in the very pose of his
hands, of his body, tightly clothed in a short black coat, and of his long
legs with their knees raised, like the hind-legs of a grasshopper. For all
that, it was impossible not to recognise that he was a man of good
education; the