This, however, is only what may be, and our concern at present is with
things as they are. It has been observed that American writers have shown
themselves more susceptible of the new influences than most others, partly
no doubt from a natural sensitiveness of organization, but in some measure
also because there are with us no ruts and fetters of old tradition from
which we must emancipate ourselves before adopting anything new. We have
no past, in the European sense, and so are ready for whatever the present
or the future may have to suggest. Nevertheless, the novelist who, in a
larger degree than any other, seems to be the literary parent of our own
best men of fiction, is himself not an American, nor even an Englishman,
but a Russian--Turguenieff. His series of extraordinary novels, translated
into English and French, is altogether the most important fact in the
literature of fiction of the last twelve years. To read his books you
would scarcely imagine that their author could have had any knowledge of
the work of his predecessors in the same field. Originality is a term
indiscriminately applied, and generally of trifling significance, but so
far as any writer may be original, Turguenieff is so.
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