SOURCE: Smyrniw, Walter. “Turgenev's Femmes Fatales.” Germano-Slavica 9, nos. 1-2 (1995-96): 135-53.

[In the following essay, Smyrniw explores possible sources for Turgenev's representation of treacherous women in his novels.]

Nimm dich in acht vor ihren schönen Haaren,
Vor diesem Schmuck, mit dem sie einzig prangt.
Wenn sie damit den jungen Mann erlangt,
So läßt sie ihn so bald nicht wieder fahren.

Goethe

In her comprehensive study of femmes fatales in literature and art, Virginia Allen has ascertained that the phrase “femme fatale” came into usage at the turn of our century, whereas the concept and the “erotic icon” of a seductive woman evolved in the previous century. She also discovered that the term femme fatale “has crept into history and criticism in the fields of literature and art history … with very little examination of the icon as such.”¹

Quite analogous was the reception of the femmes fatales in the works of Ivan Turgenev. Such women were neither perceived nor discussed by the critics of the nineteenth century. Only in recent times, literary scholars began to identify some women in Turgenev's works as femmes fatales.² Although not inappropriate per se, such designations are hardly illuminating, inasmuch as they are often made in passing and not duly linked to the evolution of the “erotic icon” in European literature and art. For a more comprehensive insight into Turgenev's depiction of femmes fatales, it is essential to take into account both the physical attributes of femmes fatales, and the historical circumstances which gave rise to these character types.

During the nineteenth century a number of variations of the femme fatale icon appeared in literature and in visual arts. Nevertheless, certain common traits can be discerned among them. As a rule, femmes fatales were portrayed as beautiful, erotic, enchanting, manipulative, seductive and destructive. Such women were “not only amorous and lovely, but indulged [in their] sexuality without concern for [the] lover of the moment. …” The instruments of enticement and erotic arousal entailed “sculptured lips …, full and pouting …, lowered eyelids …, a partially opened mouth, thrown-back head, and long flowing hair.”³ And the destructive traits of these women were highlighted through comparisons to vampires, sirens, mythological and historical women of antiquity who had proved lethal to their lovers. In many instances femmes fatales were cast to represent the evil nature of women, i.e. their role in temptation, sin and damnation. Such depictions served often as a contrast to women's role in the redemption and salvation of mankind, representing thereby the so-called Mary and Eve dichotomy, the opposite poles of the “dual concept of the Eternal Feminine.”⁴

By the 1860's the femme fatale typology reached its full development in European literature and visual arts. However, the incipience of the femme fatale concept and its inherent imagery dates back to the preceding century, or more precisely, to the plays of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In his early play Götz von Berlichengen (1773) Goethe cast the prototype of the femme fatale in the role of Countess Adelheid. Manipulative, seductive and evil, Adelheid is endowed with the inverse traits of Götz's sister Maria who is gentle, compassionate and docile. As Virginia Allen puts it, “the polar opposition of Maria and Adelheid” represents “the ancient dual concept of the Eternal Feminine.”⁵ Goethe's Faust contains a further elaboration of the above concept as well as the introduction of the Jewish legend about Adam's first wife Lilith in the Walpurgisnacht scene. Although brief, this part of Goethe's play had a substantial influence on the incipience of the femme fatale icon, as it became an important source of inspiration for several writers and painters.

In the wake of Goethe's writings, English poets and painters made further contributions to the evolution of femme fatale typology. Percy Bysshe Shelley's translations of scenes from Faust, particularly the Walpurgisnacht scene and the depiction of Lilith, and his poem “On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery” (1824) endorsed the emerging view of women's erotic and destructive propensities. John Keats also dealt with this very theme in his ballad “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (1819), and in the poem “Lamia” (1819) he introduced the image of a “snake woman” which later became an important component of the fully-developed icon of femmes fatales. Amidst English painters, Henry Fuseli and Theodor von Holst became the foremost contributors to the evolution of the erotic portrayal of women. Of considerable influence were Fuseli's painting's “The Nightmare” (1781) and “The Daughter of Herodias with the Head of John the Baptist” (c. 1779) and von Holst's “A Scene from Goethe's Faust” (1833) or, alternatively entitled, “Faust and Lilith.”

All of the aforementioned conceptions and attributes of femmes fatales were assimilated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a painter, a poet, and the founding-member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of English painters, poets and critics, established in 1848. Thanks to Rossetti's efforts, femmes fatales became what Virginia Allen calls the “full-bodied, full-throated long-haired … versions of lethal womanhood.”⁶ In his paintings Rossetti repeatedly underscored that the erotic and deadly traits of femmes fatales represent but one aspect of the diadic concept of the Eternal Feminine. The other concept can be discerned in a number of his paintings of saints and various emblems of salvation. As a poet Rossetti had the propensity of writing some poems on the very themes of his painting, as though he wanted to emphasize verbally the visual statements about the sensual and spiritual beauty and the powers of temptation and salvation held by the women representing the diadic concept of the Eternal Feminine. The most striking examples of this creative wont are Rossetti's paintings Lady Lilith (1868) and Sibylla Palmifera (1866-1870) and their companion sonnets with the title “Body's Beauty” for the former, and “Soul's Beauty” for the latter.

No one understood Rossetti's intention better than Algernon Swinburne, his close friend and fellow poet. As Rossetti had a major influence on Swinburne, many of his poems entailed outright descriptions of Rossetti's paintings. Moreover, in his essays and reviews Swinburne alluded to the prevalence of the dualistic concepts in Rossetti's works, and Swinburne was the first to employ the term “fatal” in reference to Rossetti's depictions of “deadly desirable women.”⁷ In sum, thanks to the mutual efforts of Rossetti and Swinburne “the English version of the full-fledged femme fatale” was well established by 1871 when Robert Buchanan attacked both Swinburne and Rossetti for their on-going depictions of sensuous women which gave rise to what he called “The Fleshy School of Poetry.”⁸

Many of the above-mentioned developments have a bearing on Turgenev's portrayal of femmes fatales, because he had the opportunity of becoming personally acquainted with both Rossetti and Swinburne during his sojourn in England between 1870 and 1871. But no less significant is the fact that since his student days at the University of Berlin, Turgenev valued highly Goethe's writings, especially his Faust. The first published evidence of this was his translation of the last scene from Faust, published in 1844. This was followed by Turgenev's long review of M. Vrochenko's translation of Faust which appeared in 1845.

The translation and the review were but a prelude to Turgenev's adaptations and transformations of certain motifs from Goethe's play. The foremost example of this wont is the epistolary story “Faust,” penned by Turgenev in 1856. It contains an interesting account of the diverse receptions of the erotic motifs in Faust and of the psychological impact that the play can have on certain personalities.

As Goethe's Faust was being read aloud in Turgenev's story, Herr Schimmel, an old teacher of German, kept exclaiming “How sublime! … How profound! … How wonderful!” Whereas his Russian neighbour, Priimkov, found it rather boring, his wife, Vera Nikolaevna, listened attentively to the reading and then decided to peruse the play herself. As for the reader himself, Pavel Aleksandrovich, who was “under the influence” of Faust, felt it prudent to skip a few passages from the “Night on Brocken.”⁹ His reluctance to read them is understandable, for this part of Goethe's play contains an erotic pageant, featuring such exotica as naked witches and the appearance of Lilith, Adam's first wife. Moreover, Faust's dancing and conversation with the Young Witch and Mephistopheles' chat with the Old Witch further underscore the erotic and sexual notions of the play. Later, when she reads the work herself, Vera Nikolaevna beholds the erotic and seductive motifs of the “Night on Brocken,” but they do not seem to make an impression on her. Instead, she is struck by the lot of Gretchen and identifies herself with Gretchen to such an extent that she appropriates some aspects of her behaviour and utterances. Thus prior to telling Pavel Aleksandrovich that she loves him, Vera Nikolaevna asks him to read aloud the scene where Gretchen asks Faust whether he believes in God (the very scene where Gretchen promises to sleep with him); and similarly, on her death bed Vera Nikolaevna utters Gretchen's words “Was will er an dem heiligen Ort” and “throughout her illness, she raved about Faust and her mother whom she called sometimes Martha and sometimes Gretchen's mother.”¹⁰

From the above passages it is indicative that Turgenev was well aware of the “dual concept of the Eternal Feminine” in the summer of 1856 when he wrote the story “Faust,” but chose not to develop this notion in his story. It would seem that Turgenev decided to reserve such a compositional mode for a novel which he started writing in the fall of 1856. Consequently, Turgenev's novel Dvorianskoe gnezdo (A Nest of Gentry, 1859) contains his first exposition of the temptation and salvation syndrome (the Mary and Eve dichotomy), which Goethe introduced in his plays Götz von Berlichengen and expounded further in Faust.

Fedor Lavretskii, the protagonist of A Nest of Gentry, first falls in love with a sensuous, seductive and a manipulative woman, and later with a woman exemplifying purity and religious values. The former is his wife, Varvara Pavlovna, and the latter is his distant relative, Liza Kalitina. When he met Varvara, Lavretskii was overwhelmed by her physical beauty: “her pretty face”, her “marvellous eyes”, “thin eyebrows,” “expressive lips,” “the posture of her head, arms and neck.”¹¹ On marrying this voluptuous woman, Lavretskii had no inkling that Varvara was using her sensuous beauty to manipulate him. He managed to escape from her control only after discovering that she was unfaithful to him.

Lavretskii was the first but not the only victim of Varvara's amorous exploits. She allured men not only through her physical attractiveness, but aggressively by way of sensuous gestures and allusions. These enticing actions entail flirting with Gedeonovskii by placing “the tip of her little foot on his foot,” by making eyes at him and giggling while he was giving her a lift in his carriage.¹² In the case of Vladimir Panshin, Varvara Pavlovna resorted to such enticements as “holding her white hands at the level of her lips” while he was playing a romance on the piano, suggesting that they sing songs with sensuous contents, as well as her “habit of touching very slightly the sleeve of her collocutor” and “these instantaneous touches excited Vladimir Nikolaevich very much.”¹³ In view of all these sensuous and alluring signals, Panshin could not help but accede to Varvara Pavlovna's invitation to visit her at the Lavriki estate and spend a lot of time there. In a few months she gained complete control over Panshin: “Varvara Pavlovna had enslaved him, literally enslaved him: there is no other word to express her unlimited, irrevocable, irresponsible power over him.”¹⁴ Although Varvara Pavlovna is repeatedly identified in the novel as a “lioness” and a coquette, some literary scholars have concluded that Varvara Pavlovna is “worthy of the appellation femme fatale …,” and that she is portrayed as a “treacherous femme fatale.”¹⁵ Although such inferences are not inappropriate, they should be qualified by the understanding that the portrayal of Varvara Pavlovna, the first femme fatale in Turgenev's novels, was predicated on the prototypes of femmes fatales which Turgenev beheld in Goethe's plays, and particularly in Faust.

Cast as an antipode to Varvara Pavlovna, Liza Kalitina is not lacking in beauty. Lavretskii finds her physically attractive and reflects on her enchanting features,¹⁶ and Panshin too found her captivating till Varvara lured him away. Although Liza's good looks are mentioned, they are less conspicuous than her proclivity to truth, purity, altruism and religious devotion. In spite of the piety instilled since childhood by her nurse Agafiia, Liza is capable of falling in love and admits this to Lavretskii. But at the same time she subordinates everything, including her desire for personal happiness, to the will of God. Consequently, when she realizes that such happiness cannot be attained because the news about the death of Varvara Pavlovna was false, Liza quickly concludes that God must be punishing her for falling in love with Lavretskii and resolves to enter a convent in order to expiate not only her personal sins, but also those of her family members.¹⁷

The details of the portraits of Varvara Pavlovna and Liza are too numerous to be mentioned here in toto, but suffice it to state that the contrasts in these personages have seldom escaped the attention of literary critics. Some have perceived the depiction of the above women as “utterly diadic, an almost perfect enactment of the virgin/whore polarity,”¹⁸ and others have asserted that “Liza and Varvara are in a very real sense two aspects of Pauline Viardot, in so far as they represent the two sides of his ideal woman, the twin faces of the eternal feminine.”¹⁹ Such explications are unsatisfactory in several respects: they do not relate the diadic mode of characterization to Turgenev's keen interest in character types (as exemplified in his essay “Hamlet and Don Quixote”), and they do not mention the source from which Turgenev could have derived the concept of Eternal Feminine.

In 1858 Turgenev worked almost simultaneously on the essay entitled “Hamlet and Don Quixote” and on the novel A Nest of Gentry. In view of this it is not surprising that by the end of the last century some critics managed to discern Turgenev's conception of Quixotic traits in the behaviour of Mikhalevich, a minor personage in A Nest of Gentry.²⁰ Turgenev does not exclude women from the Hamletic and Quixotic typology, for he asserts that “two fundamental, antipodal traits of human nature are embodied in these two types …,” and that “all people belong more or less to one of these types.”²¹ To be sure, some of Turgenev's heroines were cast as feminine variants of the Hamletic and Quixotic character types, or else combinations of both, but one would be hard put to perceive Turgenev's femmes fatales in terms of this typology. There is, however, an alternate possibility. From the analogy between Hamlet and Mephistopheles which Turgenev makes in the essay²² it is plain that he reflected not only on the works of Shakespeare and Cervantes, but also on Goethe's Faust while he was working on the “Hamlet and Don Quixote” essay and on the novel A Nest of Gentry.

On comparing the first part of Faust with A Nest of Gentry one can readily discern that both contain a diadic portrayal of women—a siren and sibyl syndrome—and also note the similarities between Gretchen and Liza and between Varvara Pavlovna and Lilith. Both Gretchen and Liza are young, innocent and profoundly religious; they are attracted to older men who intrude into their world of piety; both Gretchen and Liza lose the tranquility of life by falling in love, and eventually they accept the tragic consequences of their affairs and submit themselves to the judgement of God. The parallels between Lilith and Varvara are fewer, but they are equally striking: both seek only sensuous gratification, and both tempt and seduce men in order to keep them under complete control. From these and other similarities which can be discerned in Faust and A Nest of Gentry it is evident that Goethe's play provided Turgenev with a model for the diadic feminine typology which he utilized in A Nest of Gentry and in several subsequent works. In view of the above factors, it is surprising, however, that the various parallels in Goethe's play and Turgenev's novel were not previously observed by the scholars who had explored Goethe's influence on Turgenev.²³

In spite of being only an episodical character in the novel Ottsy i deti (Fathers and Sons, 1861), Turgenev's next femme fatale represents an important phase in the author's treatment of the Eternal Feminine concept. In this novel Turgenev decided to cast Princess R—— as both a siren and a sibyl. As a siren, the Princess had “the reputation of a frivolous coquette” who “laughed and jested with young men whom she received before dinner in her dimly-lit drawing room. …” Although “no one would have called her a beauty,” Princess R—— managed to allure men with two remarkable features: “her hair, gold coloured and as heavy as gold, which fell below her knees” and her eyes which had an unusual and “an enigmatic glance.” Whereas in the role of a sibyl the Princess would weep and pray during the night and “often paced the room till morning, wringing her hands in anguish, or sat, pale and cold, reading the Psalter.”²⁴ And without attaining it herself, Princess R—— pointed out to Pavel Kirsanov how salvation could be achieved by returning the ring he had given her, by drawing on it “lines in shape of a cross over the sphinx” and by conveying the message to him “that the cross is the solution.”²⁵

Although the depiction of the siren and sibyl duality is quite brief, it contains new and significant elements in respect to Turgenev's subsequent renditions of femmes fatales. One of them entails such attributes as long and gold coloured hair and the impressive and powerful eyes. The other pertains to the city of Baden which serves as the setting for Pavel Kirsanov's last romantic encounter with Princess R—— as well as the setting for Turgenev's next novel, Dym (Smoke, 1867), featuring a major femme fatale figure.

In Smoke Turgenev made no attempt to depict the traits of both a siren and a sibyl within the same person, as he had in the case of Princess R——. Instead, he reverted to a diadic exposition of the temptation-salvation syndrome. However, he decided to reverse the emphasis that he had used previously. Whereas in the A Nest of Gentry Turgenev adhered to the pattern inherent in Faust by developing to a greater extent the traits of the sibyl, i.e. the character of Liza, in Smoke he chose to deviate from Goethe's model and emphasize the role of the siren. Therefore, in the latter novel the portrayal of Tatiana Shestova, the sibyl and saviour, is kept to a bare minimum. Her fiancé, Grigorii Litvinov, thinks of her as “his sweet, kind, holy Tatiana …,” as his “guardian angel” and a “good genius. …” Litvinov's friend, Sozont Potugin, also observes that Tatiana “has a golden heart, a truly angelic soul.” But apart from these attributes, the portrayal of Tatiana is so minimal that it resembles the photograph of her which Litvinov contemplates prior to yielding to a Russian siren called Irina Ratmirova.²⁶ In all, the reader discerns nothing about Tatiana's childhood, her education, how and when she met her fiancé, and for that matter why she loves him, and even more importantly, why she eventually forgave Litvinov for succumbing to a femme fatale.

Quite the contrary is Turgenev's depiction of Irina's character. He presents the reader with an abundance of details about her life, ranging from the experiences as a young girl to those of a woman in her early thirties. It would seem that Turgenev strove to show thereby how Irina had acquired the mentality of a femme fatale, i.e. the propensity of sensually attracting certain males and then keeping them under complete control. In Irina's case this inclination can be traced to her “love of power” (vlastoliubie), first exemplified during her sojourn at the boarding school, and later having “an almost unlimited freedom in the home of her parents.”²⁷ This enabled Irina to gain complete control over Litvinov when he was courting her in his student days, then terminate their relationship and later subjugate him once again while she was married to another man. Moreover, Irina also enticed Potugin to fall in love with her and then controlled his life to the extent that he was willing to marry Irina's pregnant friend and to bring up her daughter. And even when she turned thirty, Irina was “just as charming as ever” and “a countless number of young men fell in love with her …,” but others did not fall in love with her, as they were “afraid of her ‘malevolent’ mind” (boiatsia ee “ozloblennogo” uma).²⁸

As a highly successful femme fatale, Irina attracts men primarily by her physical beauty. At seventeen Irina was already an unusual woman, a very striking figure. Turgenev depicts it with great skill and in such detail that he renders an accomplished verbal portrait.

She was a tall young woman with a good figure, with somewhat small breasts and young narrow shoulders, and for her age an unusually pale and smooth skin, as clear and smooth as porcelain, and thick blonde hair with its darker strands mingling uniquely with lighter ones. Her features were elegant, almost artificially regular and had not lost the artless expression of early youth; but in the slow movements of her beautiful neck, in her smile, seemingly either an absent-minded or a weary smile which revealed that she was a nervous young lady, and in the very outlines of the thin, faintly smiling lips, of her small, aquiline, slightly compressed nose, there was something self-willed and passionate, something dangerous both for others and for herself. Striking, truly striking were her eyes, which were dark-grey shot with green, languishing eyes with unusually long and radiating lashes, like those of Egyptian goddesses, and boldly sweeping brows. Those eyes had a strange expression: they seemed to be looking attentively and thoughtfully from an unknown depth and distance.²⁹

That is how Litvinov perceived Irina when he first met her during his days at the university of Moscow. When he saw her ten years later in Baden Irina not only retained all her youthful features, but seemed even more beautiful. “How lovely, how strong is the femininity of her young body!”³⁰ thought Litvinov. However, he soon discovered that Irina had changed in one respect: she became very skilled at using the strength of her femininity and her beauty to enchant and to control men. With this intent she would bedazzle men by her “white shoulders,” the “beautiful curve of her gleaming neck,” the “whiteness of her face,” by the “birthmark on her cheek,” by her “thirsting lips” and “extraordinary eyelashes.”³¹ Even more enticing were her “splendid eyes,” for her “bewitching eyes pierced into his [Litvinov's] heart. …”³² But the most powerful arsenal was her beautiful, blonde hair. Irina used it as the means of keeping Litvinov under her control. Thus when he began to have doubts about their relationship, “she caught him with both hands, pressed his head to her breast, her comb jingled and started rolling, and her falling hair enveloped him in a fragrant and soft wave.”³³

From the examples cited above and from other textual details in Smoke, it is evident that by means of the elaborate depiction of Irina's sensuous beauty and the various means she had employed to entice men and to keep them under her control. Turgenev succeeded in rendering an accomplished portrait of a typical femme fatale. As such it bears a close resemblance to the femme fatale icon at the apex of its development in European literature and art in the 1860's. However, the image of the siren in Turgenev's novel differs in some respects from its European counterparts. Whereas in West European visual arts and literature the seductive traits of femmes fatales were often underscored through specific symbols and allusions to mythological figures or to famous seductresses in the annals of antiquity, Turgenev's depiction of the femme fatale in Smoke is confined to contemporary reality and a fidelity to a realistic writing technique that excludes a deliberate utilization of symbolism.

In 1870 Turgenev embarked again on the writing of a short novel which he subsequently called Veshnie vody (Torrents of Spring, 1872). As Turgenev put it in a letter to Ia. P. Polonskii of 18 December 1871, his novel contains “a love theme which has no bearing at all on social, political or contemporary issues.” Moreover, in the above letter Turgenev also stated that as an author he knew “what [he] wanted to achieve” by it (chto khotel sdelat'), but he was not certain that the public would perceive it.³⁴ And indeed the contemporary readers and critics alike failed to discern the significance of the main theme in Torrents of Spring. Not only Turgenev's fellow countrymen, but even such Western literary figures as Gustave Flaubert, who was greatly impressed with Torrents of Spring and praised Turgenev's skill in the depiction of the contrasting types of women, did not seem to realize that the two women were cast as a sibyl and a siren which comprise the opposite poles of the Eternal Feminine theme in the novel. It would seem that not only Turgenev's contemporaries, but also readers in our time fail to discern the sibyl and siren dichotomy and its relevance to the love theme due to a literal reading of the text and a disregard of the inherent symbolism and figurative language of the novel.

At the literal level, Torrents of Spring contains an account of two diverse experiences of love which Dmitrii Sanin had when he travelled through Germany in the summer of 1840. The first took place during a stop in Frankfurt (on Main). Sanin fell in love with Gemma Roselli, the daughter of an Italian confectioner who immigrated to Germany. In every respect this was a spiritual and a Platonic relationship. But quite unexpectedly, two days later he had a sensuous affair in Wiesbaden with Maria Polozova, a rich Russian woman, to whom Sanin wanted to sell his estate in order to have enough money to marry Gemma. Thereafter Sanin abandoned Gemma and became Polozova's love-slave. Even at a literal level Torrents of Spring is an intriguing novel with several ironic developments. But Turgenev does not confine the exposition of the love theme to a realistic level. By way of an authorial comment he encourages the readers to reflect on a deeper level of meaning of this novel by decoding some of its inherent symbols. For example, Turgenev states parenthetically that “in Italian Gemma means, of course, a precious stone.”³⁵ This comment is made shortly before Gemma gives Sanin “a little garnet cross” that she had worn on her neck and says: “If I am yours, then your faith is now also my faith!”³⁶ Thus the authorial remark as well as Gemma's gesture and comment are meant to prompt the reader to reflect on the symbolic significance of the cross and its relevance to Gemma's role in the novel.

Both the garnet cross and Gemma's declaration underscore the spiritual nature of the love between Sanin and Gemma. In view of this it is not surprising that Sanin and Gemma do not even exchange a single kiss throughout their brief relationship. Instead, they communicate their affection for each other symbolically by exchanging several times the rose which a German officer had taken impudently from their table in a restaurant after making a toast to Gemma's beauty.³⁷ Inasmuch as Gemma's surname, Roselli, signifies in Italian a “small rose,” both the rose and the gernet cross which Sanin received from Gemma are in essence a form of symbolic communication which Turgenev calls “the giving of one's soul to another.”³⁸ Moreover, both in the traditional sense and in Torrents of Spring, the cross encompasses symbolically such interrelated human experiences as treachery, suffering, forgiveness and salvation.

All of the above notions are not only expressed through the symbol of the cross, but developed as striking motifs of the novel. For example, on responding to Gemma's query at the time of his departure for Wiesbaden Sanin states: “I'm yours … I'll come back,” but betrays her two days later by succumbing to Maria Polozova's sensuality. Consequently, Sanin is denounced by Pantaleone who calls him an “infame traditore” (a vile traitor).³⁹ By way of this betrayal Sanin brought a lot of suffering to Gemma and her family. However, he did not fare much better himself, as he had to endure the ignominy of being a sex-slave of Polozova, of having to wear an iron ring as a sign of his bondage. And even after severing his relationship with her, Sanin was not able to marry and in later years suffered from a “spiritual and physical” fatigue and loneliness.

At first the reader has the impression that Gemma's garnet cross was not a potent talisman. Although Sanin had “kissed a thousand times the little cross,”⁴⁰ it did not ward him against Polozova's sexual ploys. But from the framework of the novel it is plain that the little cross played a vital role in the reawakening of Sanin's memories about the spiritual intimacy with Gemma, in his salvation from a taedium vitae, a fear of death and lonely old age. In her letter Gemma forgave Sanin for his betrayal and the suffering he had brought her, and “wished him above all peace of mind and a calm spirit. …”⁴¹ As Gemma also desired to see him, Sanin was able to look forward to a spiritual salvation, ie. a reunion with her in America.

At the end of the novel Sanin underscores the symbolic value of the little garnet cross by having it “set in a magnificent pearl necklace” and sending it as a wedding present to Gemma's daughter. In several respects the setting of the cross is analogous to the architectonics of Torrents of Spring. In the novel Turgenev employs a number of symbols in order to accentuate the symbolic roles of the major personages and the motifs associated with them. Thus the symbolic meaning inherent in Gemma's given name and surname, the subtle symbolism of the rose that was exchanged between Sanin and Gemma, and, above all, the garnet cross bring to the fore Gemma's role of a sibyl and saviour. And similarly, an array of impressive symbols highlights Polozova's role of the siren and femme fatale.

In comparison with the sirens in his previous works, Maria Polozova is obviously Turgenev's most accomplished portrait of a femme fatale. However, a number of the attributes of her physiognomy are similar to the author's previous castings of femmes fatales. Polozova is portrayed as “a young, beautiful lady” with “a marvellous figure,” “a charming neck, marvellous shoulders.” And “when she smiled, not one or two, but three little dimples appeared on each cheek, and her eyes smiled more than her lips, more than her long, bright red, delicious lips with two tiny moles on the left side.”⁴² Like Irina Ratmirova in Smoke, Polozova had very striking eyes, and “when she opened them wide, something evil came through their bright, almost cold gleam. …” But the most powerful feature by far was Polozova's “thick blonde hair [which] fell down on both sides of her head—braided but not pinned up.”⁴³

Although Turgenev does not state it explicitly, the reader can nevertheless discern without difficulty the symbolic significance of Polozova's “snake-like braids” [zmeevidnye kosy]. And in a further passage, the semblance to a snake is not confined to the hair, but extended to Polozova herself: “‘A snake! Ah, she is a snake!’ thought Sanin … ‘but what a beautiful snake!’”⁴⁴ And indeed, on the following day Polozova proves herself a true snake-woman—a highly skilled temptress and seductress—when Sanin agrees to go riding with her. During this outing Polozova was riding ahead of Sanin, and the snake-like braids were continually flying before his eyes, luring him into temptation. The image of a snake appears also in the description of Polozova's triumphant smile after her seduction and subjugation of Sanin. However, as it is conveyed through a Russian idiom which cannot be translated literarily into English, this image can only be discerned in the Russian text: “na gubakh zmeilos' torzhestvo.”⁴⁵

Less obvious, but no less effective, is the symbolic significance of Polozova's name and the place she chose to seduce Sanin. At first sight the surname Polozova appears to be based on the Russian word poloz, meaning a runner of a sledge. But poloz has another meaning in Russian, namely, a grass-snake. It would seem, therefore, that Turgenev intently chose this surname to underscore symbolically the seductive propensity of this femme fatale. And by the same token, it would seem that he picked Wiesbaden as an appropriate setting for the sexual ploys of the grass-snake-woman, not only because it was a fashionable spa frequented by Russians at the time, but also because in German the name of the city connotes both a grass meadow (Wiese) and water or spa (Bad). In view of this, it is also symbolically significant that en route to the place of seduction Polozova decided to turn off the main highway and proceed along the path leading to a “meadow which was at first dry, but then wet, and then completely swampy. The water seeped through everywhere, stood in puddles. Maria Nikolaevna rode her horse deliberately through these puddles, laughed loudly and repeated: ‘Let's do some school-pranks!’”⁴⁶

Although the exact place of the seduction of Sanin is not given in the novel, it can be approximated from a number of references to the local topography. For example, on leaving the city of Wiesbaden, Polozova told Sanin that she wanted to ride to the “wonderful mountains,” to the “wonderful forest.” In the given local this can only refer to the forests of the Taunus Mountains which lie north of Wiesbaden. Further, when they reach the forest, Polozova asked Sanin whether he could see “a red wooden cross.” When Sanin replied in the affirmative, she stated “‘Ah, great! I know where we are.’”⁴⁷ This is obviously a reference to a road sign, and in the Taunus Mountains, a sign with a red cross could pertain to the mountain called Rotekreuzkopf (Red-Cross-Head) which lies not far from Wiesbaden.

The sign with a red cross and the Rotekreuzkopf mountain have a twofold symbolic significance. Not far from the Rotekreuzkopf mountain (about a kilometre from it) there is a village spa called Schlangenbad (Snake-Spa). As the name suggests, this is the true domain of all water-snakes, and, therefore, it is not surprising that Polozova knows this place well. And by the same token, those who were familiar with the vicinity of Wiesbaden (and in the nineteenth century many Russians knew it well, as they frequented both the spa and the gambling tables of Wiesbaden) would recognize without difficulty the relevance of the Snake-Spa to the recurring snake symbolism in the novel. And in the context of Torrents of Spring the wooden red cross can also be linked to the symbolic significance of Gemma's little garnet cross which Sanin was kissing most ardently only a day before succumbing to Polozova's seduction in the forest at the foot of Red Cross Mountain.

As the allusion to the red cross occurs shortly before Sanin's seduction by the beautiful snake-woman, it adds more than a touch of irony to the symbolism of the novel, inasmuch as for Sanin the Red Cross Mountain did not signify a salvation, but a fall and damnation. And not for Sanin alone, for Polozova likely used this very place for the seduction of the German officer, Baron von Dönhof, who like Sanin had to wear Polozova's ring of bondage. No less ironic is the symbolism conveyed by Polozova's first name, Maria. Traditionally this name conveys symbolically such notions as purity, virginity and salvation. It is, therefore, an ironic, indeed an incongruous name for a woman like Polozova who is in every respect the antithesis of a spiritual being. Indeed, in the novel Polozova is not only identified as “an immoral woman,” but cast as a predatory creature. Not only her wont to dominate over men's bodies and souls, but Polozova's ardent desire to possess the whole world can be readily surmised from the descriptions of her facial expressions during the wild gallop to the mountains:

What a face it is! It seems as though it is wide open: the wide open eyes, greedy, bright and wild; the lips, the nostrils also wide opened and breathing greedily; she is staring straight, fixed in front of her, and, it seems, that her soul wants to possess everything it sees—the earth, the sky, the sun, and the air itself—and it regrets only one thing: there are not enough dangers—it would have overcome them all!⁴⁸

From the above depiction of Polozova as well as from her seductive role it is plain that by assigning the name Maria to an obvious femme fatale Turgenev had the objective of creating a portrait of a false virgin, a false saviour, indeed, the very icon of an Anti-Maria.

In contrast to Turgenev's previous works, the exposition of the Eternal Feminine theme in Torrents of Spring entails not only a skilful utilization of realistic details, but also an array of symbols which are meant to underscore the inherent Mary and Eve syndrome. A further contrast with Turgenev's previous depictions of femmes fatales are also the allusions to various literary and mythological figures of antiquity. In the rendition of Polozova during the “mad gallop” Turgenev likens her to an Amazon and a Centaur: “This is no horsewoman [Eto uzh ne amazonka]⁴⁹ putting her horse to a gallop—this is a galloping young female Centaur, half beast, half god. …”⁵⁰ Further, inasmuch as her braids were previously likened to snakes, the reader can also associate Polozova with other figures in Greek mythology, namely the Gorgon sisters, famous for their snake-hair and mortal glances. But the dominant and the recurring allusion in Turgenev's novel is to Virgil's Aeneid. First, on chatting with Sanin, Polozova extols Book IV as the best part of the epic and mentions it again during their horse ride. As Sanin “had only a vague idea of the Aeneid,” he was not aware that Polozova identified herself with the passionate queen of Virgil's epic and based some of her schemes on her favourite part of this work. Therefore, it is hardly a coincidence that the reader can discern several parallels between the erotic episodes in the Aeneid and Torrents of Spring. For example, in Book IV of the Aeneid Dido invites Aeneas to go hunting on horseback. During the hunt they are caught in a severe thunderstorm in a forest on a mountain and seek refuge in a cave where they make love. Polozova also asks Sanin to go horse riding with her, and they too face a thunderstorm on a mountain. Delighted by this coincidence Polozova says to Sanin “‘Remember, I told you yesterday about the Aeneid? You know a storm also caught them in the woods.’” Polozova obviously knew where to find cover from the rain, for they soon reached “a humble warden's hut” under “an overhanging grey cliff.” At the entrance to the hut Polozova “turned around to Sanin and whispered: ‘Aeneas!’”⁵¹

On comparing the femmes fatales cast by Turgenev in the novels A Nest of Gentry, Fathers and Sons, Smoke and Torrents of Spring one can discern some recurring similarities and the emergence of new traits among these figures. In all of the above novels the femmes fatales are always depicted as a component of the temptation/salvation syndrome encompassing the concept of the Eternal Feminine. All of the temptresses have the propensity to attract men by their physical beauty and sensuality, of keeping in bondage the men who succumb to their charms. Moreover, in the novels written after 1860 Turgenev's femmes fatales have such common instruments of enticement as very prominent and bewitching eyes, and long blonde hair. Although she is endowed with all of the above mentioned traits, Maria Polozova differs from the previous femme fatales by indulging in sexuality more overtly and for the sake of personal enjoyment. Indeed, Polozova not only marries a man willing to tolerate her extramarital sexual liaisons, but makes wagers with her husband on the men that she plans to seduce.

A chronological comparison of Turgenev's depiction of femmes fatales reveals more than the similarities and differences among the protagonists. It also brings to light the facts that Turgenev was preoccupied with Goethe's Faust when he embarked in A Nest of Gentry on the exposition of a diadic typology predicated on the Mary and Eve syndrome, and that he concluded the exposition of this typology in his last novel by invoking both Goethe's name and his father's house and by setting Torrents of Spring in Frankfurt and Wiesbaden, Goethe's ancestral domain. Do these facts suffice to sustain the inference that Turgenev developed the femme fatale typology solely on the basis of the Eternal Feminine concept derived from Goethe? At first sight, this would not seem unreasonable, inasmuch as Turgenev strove to depict in his works the various phenomena of life through certain character types, a number of which he derived from the works of such men of letters as Shakespeare, Cervantes, Schiller and Goethe. However, it is also plain that Turgenev did not restrict himself to the works of the foremost authors, but paid close attention to the contemporary literal and cultural trends in Europe.

As he spent most of his life abroad, Turgenev was not only well-aware of the literary and cultural developments in Germany and France, but also in England. Consequently, Turgenev was obviously cognisant that the femme fatale typology was well established in literature and visual art during the 1860's. Furthermore, he was personally acquainted with some of the poets and painters whom Virginia Allen identified as the major contributors to the evolution of the femme fatale icon: Théophile Gautier, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Swinburne⁵² and several members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Evidently, Turgenev read some of Rossetti's poems as early as 1852, and later, during his 1871 sojourn in England, he also became acquainted with Rossetti's controversial collection of verses, which appeared in 1870 under the title Poems. But it is also evident from his letters that Turgenev did not understand some of Rossetti's poems, and that on the whole, he did not appreciate Rossetti's poetic works.⁵³ However, it is equally obvious that Turgenev greatly admired Swinburne's poetry, extolled his “great lyrical talent,” and proclaimed him “the most remarkable contemporary English poet.”⁵⁴ Although Turgenev did not identify the edition of poetry that appealed to him most, he was likely referring to Swinburne's Poems and Ballads (1866) which contained many of his best and most notorious poems, including those which feature his versions of femmes fatales. Quite likely Turgenev was also aware of the fact that the appearance of this volume caused a major uproar in the literary world, as it was deemed by some both insulting and blasphemous to womanhood.⁵⁵

Turgenev's first encounter with the visual art of the Pre-Raphaelites dates back to 1857 when he attended the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester. This exhibition featured a large display of English paintings, and, according to Patrick Waddington, Turgenev “must at least have been visually excited by the often stunning freshness of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings sent in by proud industrialists.”⁵⁶ It is not clear whose paintings Turgenev may have seen at the exhibition in Manchester, but it is known that in 1871 Turgenev met many Pre-Raphaelites in London. In fact they held a party in his honour at the house of Ford Mardox Brown. Although “at Brown's house Turgenev will have had the chance to examine a vast range of Pre-Raphaelite pictures and objects d'art …,” he was nevertheless keenly interested in seeing Rossetti's paintings. Such an opportunity presented itself on 23 June 1871 when Rossetti invited Turgenev for dinner. There is reason to believe that Turgenev's curiosity about Rossetti's painting was duly appeased on that occasion, since “Rossetti's house … was a veritable museum.”⁵⁷ Among other things, Turgenev may have caught a glimpse of some of Rossetti's numerous painting and sketches from Goethe's Faust.⁵⁸ Turgenev could have seen a number of Rossetti's paintings and sketches of femmes fatales, and possibly one of several studies known as “La Belle Dame sans Merci” that feature a young woman, whose long, golden hair is woven around the neck of the man riding with her on horseback.⁵⁹ Furthermore, inasmuch as he read Rossetti's recently published Poems which contained a number of “Sonnets for Pictures,” (ie. poems written on the same themes as his paintings), Turgenev may have been keenly interested in seeing some of these paintings, particularly Lady Lilith (1868) and Sibylla Palmifera (1866-1870) for which Rossetti wrote the companions sonnets “Body's Beauty” and “Soul's Beauty”. It is not likely that Rossetti had shown Turgenev Sibylla Palmifera, because this painting was commissioned by George Rare and delivered to him after it was completed.⁶⁰ But Rossetti could have shown Lady Lilith to Turgenev, or else a watercolour variation of this painting, for both were still in his possession at the time. It is worth noting that on the back of the watercolour version of Lady Lilith the following lines were written “in the artist's handwriting”:

“Beware of her hair, for she excels
All women in the magic of her locks
And when she twines them round a young man's neck
She will not ever set him free again.”(61)

On this very label Rossetti acknowledged that these verses had been composed by Goethe. They pertain of course to Goethe's rendition of Adam's first wife Lilith in the Walpurgisnacht scene of Faust.

Even if Turgenev had not seen the above annotation on the watercolour version of Lady Lilith, he would have readily surmised from the reading of the sonnet “Body's Beauty” that Rossetti's poem did not entail a mere recapitulation of the Jewish legend about Adam's first wife, but a variation of Goethe's depiction of Lilith. This can be discerned from Rossetti's reference to Lilith's “enchanted hair” which “Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave, / Till heart and body and life are in its hold.”⁶² Further, Turgenev would likely have noticed Rossetti's major deviations from Goethe's model. Whereas in Faust Goethe made no mention of the colour of Lilith's hair, Rossetti bestowed his Lilith with “strangling golden hair” in both the sonnet “Body's Beauty” and in the painting Lady Lilith.⁶³ Moreover, Rossetti introduced the image of a snake in his depiction of Lilith. Thus in the sonnet he asserted that Lilith's “sweet tongue could deceive” even before Eve was tempted by “the snake,” whereas in the painting he integrated the image of the snake into Lilith's “strangling golden hair.”⁶⁴ Consequently, it is a striking feature of the painting that on the left side of Lady Lilith's head the hair is braided, forming a twisting, snake-like braid along her neck and shoulder, whereas the hair on the right side, unbraided and stretched out by a comb that she holds in her hand, has retained the snake-like waves formed by the braiding, and hence this creates the impression of a twisting locomotion of several snakes.

From Turgenev's correspondence it is evident that he was working on Torrents of Spring throughout his 1871 sojourn in London. Is there reason to presume, therefore, that the reading of Rossetti's Poems and the possible viewing of his paintings had an influence on Turgenev's novel? In the opinion of Patrick Waddington, Torrents of Spring “had little if any relation to his stay in England, being full of nostalgia for his lost happiness in Germany, coloured by his lifelong love of Italy and—more superficially—by his unfulfilled ambition to see America.”⁶⁵ But one is inclined to reach quite the contrary conclusion on comparing Turgenev's depiction of a femme fatale in Torrents of Spring with Rossetti's treatment of this subject both in the poem “Body's Beauty” and in the painting Lady Lilith. There is a striking similarity between Rossetti's femme fatale figures in the above works and Turgenev's depiction of Polozova with “snake-like braids” and with “thick blonde hair” which is during the course of the novel either flowing free, as during the wild gallop to the mountains, or being braided and arranged. Moreover, like Rossetti, by way of the snake-like hair Turgenev strove to convey the convergence of the notions of seduction and destruction. This is most apparent in a variant pertaining to the seductive and destructive actions of Polozova which Turgenev deleted from the final version of Torrents of Spring: “The soft and strong rings of the ‘beautiful snake’ were sliding down, and barely audibly and unceasingly coiling around the rabbit.”⁶⁶ The image of a beautiful snake, in essence a boa constrictor choking its victim, corresponds both to the “strangling golden hair” of Lilith in the poem “Body's Beauty” and to the golden hair strangling the young rider in Rossetti's sketch “La Belle Dame sans Merci.”

The similarity of the femme fatale imagery in the works of Rossetti and Turgenev suggests that on seeing them Turgenev must have been impressed with Rossetti's paintings to such an extent that he chose to utilize some of the imagery in his novel. Moreover, from the reading of Rossetti's poems “Soul's Beauty” and “Body's Beauty” Turgenev was no doubt able to surmise that Goethe's Faust had served as the primary source of the femme fatale notions expounded by both Rossetti and other Pre-Raphaelites, and that the femme fatale icon was not only linked to Lilith, but also to Goethe's conception of the Eternal Feminine.

In view of the above factors, there is reason to believe that the experiences in England during the summer of 1871, rather than a “nostalgia for his lost happiness in Germany” had prompted Turgenev to revise a short story that he began writing in the previous year, and to augment it to such an extent that it became a short novel which he eventually called the Torrents of Spring.⁶⁷ Written in the wake of personal acquaintances with several leading members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Torrents of Spring contains not only Turgenev's most accomplished portraits of a sibyl and a siren—the diadic counterparts of the Eternal Feminine concept—, but also an impressive portrayal of Polozova, a femme fatale bearing the closest resemblance to her counterparts in European literature and visual arts in the nineteenth century by way of her keen interest in sensual experiences and indulgence in sexuality, and by way of such erotic features as “sculptured lips … opened mouth …, and long flowing hair” all of which are used to entice, to seduce, to manipulate and ruin her lovers.

Notes

1. Virginia M. Allen, The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon (Troy, N. Y., 1983), p. ix.

2. Ivan Turgenev, Dvorianskoe gnezdo, edited with notes by Patrick Waddington (Oxford-New York, 1969), p. 227; see also Eva Kagan-Kans Hamlet and Don Quixote: Turgenev's Ambivalent Vision (The Hague, 1975), pp. 52-55; see also Marina Astman “Obraz ‘inferal'noi zhenshchiny’ v russkoi literature,” in Otkliki: sbornik statei pamiati Nikolaia Ivanovicha Ul'ianova (1904-1985), edited by Vsevolod Sechkarev, (New Haven, 1986), pp. 91-93; see also Elizabeth Cheresh Allen, Beyond Realism: Turgenev's Poetics of Secular Salvation (Stanford, 1992), p. 204; see also Rolf-Dieter Kluge, Ivan S. Turgenev: Dichtung zwischen Hoffnung und Entsagung (München, 1992), p. 133.

3. Virginia M. Allen, The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon, pp. 2, 4.

4. Virginia M. Allen, The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon, p. 6.

5. Virginia M. Allen, The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon, p. 20.

6. Virginia M. Allen, The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon, p. 99.

7. Virginia M. Allen, The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon, pp. 124-25.

8. Virginia M. Allen, The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon, p. 139.

9. I.S. Turgenev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati vos'mi tomakh, VII (Moscow, 1964), p. 25. Henceforth the references to this edition shall be cited as Works or Letters.

10. Works, VII, p. 49.

11. Works, VII, p. 166.

12. Works, VII, pp. 256, 267.

13. Works, VII, p. 265.

14. Works, VII, p. 287.

15. Elizabeth Cheresh Allen, Beyond Realism: Turgenev's Poetics of Secular Salvation, p. 204; see also Ivan Turgenev, Dvorianskoe gnezdo, edited with notes by Patrick Waddington, p. 217; Waddington's italics.

16. Works, VII, p. 184.

17. Works, VII, pp. 272, 285-86.

18. Joe Andrew, Women in Russian Literature 1780-1863 (New York, 1988), p. 145.

19. Ivan Turgenev, Dvorianskoe gnezdo, edited with notes by Patrick Waddington, p. 216-17.

20. Works, VII, p. 467.

21. Works, VIII, p. 172.

22. Works, VIII, p. 182.

23. Eva Kagan-Kans has observed in passing the similarity between Goethe's Gretchen and some of Turgenev's heroines, see Hamlet and Don Quixote: Turgenev's Ambivalent Vision, pp. 42-43; see also A. Bem, “Faust bei Turgenev,” Germanoslavica, II (1932-33), pp. 359-68; see also Elias Rosenkrantz “Turgenev und Goethe,” Germanoslavica, II (1932-33), pp. 76-90; see also Katharina Schütz, Das Goethebild Turgeniews (Bern, 1952).

24. Works, VIII, pp. 221-22.

25. Works, VIII, p. 224.

26. Works, IX, pp. 208-209, 250-51, 275.

27. Works, IX, pp. 180-81.

28. Works, IX, pp. 326, 327.

29. Works, IX, p. 180.

30. Works, IX, p. 216.

31. Works, IX, pp. 216, 242, 255.

32. Works, IX, pp. 246, 252.

33. Works, IX, p. 304.

34. Letters, IX, p. 195. Turgenev's italics.

35. Works, XI, p. 96.

36. Works, XI, p. 97.

37. Works, XI, pp. 42, 43, 45, 57.

38. Works, XI, p. 86.

39. Works, XI, p. 149.

40. Works, XI, p. 125.

41. Works, XI, p. 156.

42. Works, XI, p. 111.

43. Works, XI, pp. 109, 115.

44. Works, XI, pp. 126, 136.

45. Works, XI, p. 148. The Russian idiomatic expression “po ee litsu zmeilas' ulybka” (a smile stole across her face) is predicated on the Russian verb zmeit'sia, derived from zmei/zmeia (snake).

46. Works, XI, p. 143.

47. Works, XI, p. 146.

48. Works, XI, p. 144.

49. In Russian the term amazonka has several meanings; it can signify a legendary female warrior, a strong woman, a horsewoman or a woman's riding-habit. In this context the word may be read to mean both an Amazon and a horsewoman.

50. Works, XI, p. 144.

51. Works, XI, p. 147.

52. Virginia M. Allen, The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon, p. 254.

53. Patrick Waddington, Turgenev and England (London, 1980), p. 186.

54. Letters, IX, p. 125; see also Letters, X, pp. 8, 128.

55. Virginia M. Allen, The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon, p. 206.

56. Patrick Waddington, Turgenev and England, p. 56.

57. Patrick Waddington, Turgenev and England, pp. 193-95.

58. Virginia Surtees, The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882): A Catalogue Raisonné, I (Oxford, 1971), pp. 239-40.

59. Virginia Surtees, The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882): A Catalogue Raisonné, II (Oxford, 1971), plate 93 (Cat. no. 76B).

60. Virginia Surtees, The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882): A Catalogue Raisonné, I (Oxford, 1971), p. 116.

61. Virginia Surtees, The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882): A Catalogue Raisonné, I (Oxford, 1971), p. 118.

62. The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, I (London, 1886), p. 216.

63. The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, I (London, 1886), p. 216; see also Virginia Surtees, The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882): A Catalogue Raisonné, I (Oxford, 1971), p. 116.

64. The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, I (London, 1886), p. 216; see also Virginia Surtees, The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882): A Catalogue Raisonné, II (Oxford, 1971), plate 293 (Cat. no. 205).

65. Patrick Waddington, Turgenev and England, p. 145.

66. Works, XI, p. 336.

67. Works, XI, p. 456-57.