Smoke

Turgenev leads you silently into a crowded room and you take your place beside him and watch the white, eager faces as the samovar hisses. It is a poor room with old faded furniture, but its effect is blurred by the smoke rings of generous illusion. The youthful faces are lit up as by some inner furnace, fed by the energy, the dreams, the idealism, the inexhaustible hope of youth. General ideas float through the smoke-rings. Emotions flash into language. They all seem absolutely to believe in some rose lit dawn beyond the horizon of absolutism. The sense of expectation becomes exquisite in its tension. And then, suddenly, one is conscious of a slight chill of despondency.

Turgenev has been so near us that we have assumed our own naïveté to be his. All at once, in a half-sentence, in a note of exclamation, in the noting of a gesture, the faltering of an overloud Voice, the lowering of an eyelash, irony darts like a lizard through the fantasies of enthusiasm. Irony opposes the deed, a single deed, to innumerable words. These people talk of building up the future, but they are not constructive. They speak of the destruction of the past, but they are not destroyers. The atmosphere becomes heavy and oppressive, and as one turns away, one has in one's heart no maxim of confidence, but only the one word "Smoke" upon one's lips.