What does it mean, that Yashka has won? To answer, we try to distill the essential characteristics of the two performances. Broadly speaking: the contractor was technically wonderful but produced no feeling in his audience except amazement at his proficiency. Yashka, a little wobbly on technique, evoked undeniably deep feelings in his audience and caused a startling, not entirely rational memory to arise in the mind of the narrator. So, we feel the story to be saying something about technical proficiency vs. emotional power, and coming down in favor of the latter. It is saying that the highest aspiration of art is to move the audience and that if the audience is moved, technical deficiencies are immediately forgiven.

And this is where I always fall in love, again, with the story and forgive it all its faults. Here I’ve been resenting Turgenev’s technical bumbling—those piles of noses and brows and hairlines; the stop-and-start action; the digressions inside of digressions—and suddenly I’m moved: by Yashka’s performance, which is beautiful though not particularly technically accomplished, and by Turgenev’s performance, an analogous performance, also beautiful though technically rickety.

I’m moved by this clumsy work of art that seems to want to make the case that art may be clumsy if only it moves us.