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On September 3, 1883, Ivan Turgenev, Russian novelist, poet, and playwright, died from a spinal tumor at the age of 64. From the article:
"Ivan Sergyevitch Turgenev
Ivan Sergyevitch Turgenev came of an old stock of the Russian nobility. He was born in Orel, in the province of Orel, which lies more than a hundred miles south of Moscow, on October 28, 1818. His education was begun by tutors at home in the great family mansion in the manor of Spasskoe-Lutovinovo, and he studied later at the universities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Berlin. The influence of the last, and of the compatriots with whom he associated there, was very great; and when he returned to Moscow in 1841, he was ambitious to teach Hegel to the students there. Before this could be arranged, however, he entered the Ministry of the Interior at St. Petersburg. While there his interests turned more and more toward literature. He wrote verses and comedies, read George Sand, and made the acquaintance of Dostoevsky and the critic Bielinski. His mother, a tyrannical woman with an ungovernable temper, was eager that he should make a brilliant official career; so, when he resigned from the Ministry in 1845, she showed her disapproval by cutting down his allowance and thus forcing him to support himself by the profession he had chosen.
Turgenev was an enthusiastic hunter; and it was his experiences in the woods of his native province that supplied the material for “A Sportsman’s Sketches,” the book that first brought him reputation. The first of these papers appeared in 1847, and in the same year he left Russia in the train of Pauline Viardot, a singer and actress, to whom he had been devoted for three or four years and with whom he maintained relations for the rest of his life. For a year or two he lived chiefly in Paris or at a country house at Courtavenel in Brie, which belonged to Madame Viardot; but in 1850 he returned to Russia. His experiences were not such as to induce him to repatriate himself permanently. He found Dostoevsky banished to Siberia and Bielinski dead; and himself under suspicion by the government on account of the popularity of “A Sportsman’s Sketches.” For praising Gogol, who had just died, he was arrested and imprisoned for a short time, and for the next two years kept under police surveillance. Meantime he continued to write, and by the time that the close of the Crimean War made it possible for him again to go to western Europe, he was recognized as standing at the head of living Russian authors. His mother was now dead, the estates were settled, and with an income of about $5,000 a year he became a wanderer. He had, or imagined he had, very bad health, and the eminent specialists he consulted sent him from one resort to another, to Rome, the Isle of Wight, Soden, and the like. When Madame Viardot left the stage in 1864 and took up her residence at Baden-Baden, he followed her and built there a small house for himself. They returned to France after the Franco-Prussian War, and bought a villa at Bougival, near Paris, and this was his home for the rest of his life. Here, on September 3, 1883, he died after a long delirium due to his suffering from cancer of the spinal cord. His body was taken to St. Petersburg and was buried with national honors.
The two works by Turgenev contained in the present volume are characteristic in their concern with social and political questions, and in the prominence in both of them of heroes who fail in action. Turgenev preaches no doctrine in his novels, has no remedy for the universe; but he sees clearly certain weaknesses of the Russian character and exposes these with absolute candor yet without unkindness. Much as he lived abroad, his books are intensely Russian; yet of the great Russian novelists he alone rivals the masters of western Europe in the matter of form. In economy of means, condensation, felicity of language, and excellence of structure he surpasses all his countrymen; and “Fathers and Children” and “A House of Gentlefolk” represent his great and delicate art at its best."
"Ivan Sergyevitch Turgenev
Ivan Sergyevitch Turgenev came of an old stock of the Russian nobility. He was born in Orel, in the province of Orel, which lies more than a hundred miles south of Moscow, on October 28, 1818. His education was begun by tutors at home in the great family mansion in the manor of Spasskoe-Lutovinovo, and he studied later at the universities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Berlin. The influence of the last, and of the compatriots with whom he associated there, was very great; and when he returned to Moscow in 1841, he was ambitious to teach Hegel to the students there. Before this could be arranged, however, he entered the Ministry of the Interior at St. Petersburg. While there his interests turned more and more toward literature. He wrote verses and comedies, read George Sand, and made the acquaintance of Dostoevsky and the critic Bielinski. His mother, a tyrannical woman with an ungovernable temper, was eager that he should make a brilliant official career; so, when he resigned from the Ministry in 1845, she showed her disapproval by cutting down his allowance and thus forcing him to support himself by the profession he had chosen.
Turgenev was an enthusiastic hunter; and it was his experiences in the woods of his native province that supplied the material for “A Sportsman’s Sketches,” the book that first brought him reputation. The first of these papers appeared in 1847, and in the same year he left Russia in the train of Pauline Viardot, a singer and actress, to whom he had been devoted for three or four years and with whom he maintained relations for the rest of his life. For a year or two he lived chiefly in Paris or at a country house at Courtavenel in Brie, which belonged to Madame Viardot; but in 1850 he returned to Russia. His experiences were not such as to induce him to repatriate himself permanently. He found Dostoevsky banished to Siberia and Bielinski dead; and himself under suspicion by the government on account of the popularity of “A Sportsman’s Sketches.” For praising Gogol, who had just died, he was arrested and imprisoned for a short time, and for the next two years kept under police surveillance. Meantime he continued to write, and by the time that the close of the Crimean War made it possible for him again to go to western Europe, he was recognized as standing at the head of living Russian authors. His mother was now dead, the estates were settled, and with an income of about $5,000 a year he became a wanderer. He had, or imagined he had, very bad health, and the eminent specialists he consulted sent him from one resort to another, to Rome, the Isle of Wight, Soden, and the like. When Madame Viardot left the stage in 1864 and took up her residence at Baden-Baden, he followed her and built there a small house for himself. They returned to France after the Franco-Prussian War, and bought a villa at Bougival, near Paris, and this was his home for the rest of his life. Here, on September 3, 1883, he died after a long delirium due to his suffering from cancer of the spinal cord. His body was taken to St. Petersburg and was buried with national honors.
The two works by Turgenev contained in the present volume are characteristic in their concern with social and political questions, and in the prominence in both of them of heroes who fail in action. Turgenev preaches no doctrine in his novels, has no remedy for the universe; but he sees clearly certain weaknesses of the Russian character and exposes these with absolute candor yet without unkindness. Much as he lived abroad, his books are intensely Russian; yet of the great Russian novelists he alone rivals the masters of western Europe in the matter of form. In economy of means, condensation, felicity of language, and excellence of structure he surpasses all his countrymen; and “Fathers and Children” and “A House of Gentlefolk” represent his great and delicate art at its best."
Turgenev. Biography.
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Five Great Russian Writers Ivan Turgenev by Jason Burns
jasonburnspreahcer.com
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that Russian novelist, poet, and playwright Ivan Sergeyevich [song of Sergei] Turgenev died on September 3, 1883 from a spinal tumor at the age of 64.
Five Great Russian Writers Ivan Turgenev by Jason Burns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTRm5r8V0uo
Image:
1. 'Ivan Turgenev' 1874 painting by Ilya Repin
2. opera singer Pauline Viardot who had a life-long affair with Ivan Turgenev
3. Ivan Turgenev 'The past was a dream wasn’t it. And who ever remembers dreams.'
4. Louise Héritte-Viardot daughter of Ivan Turgenev and Pauline Viardot
Background from {[https://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/ivan-turgenev/]}
Prominent Russians: Ivan Turgenev
October 28, 1818 – September 3, 1883
Ivan Turgenev was a novelist, poet and playwright, known for his detailed descriptions of everyday life in 19th century Russia. Although Turgenev has been overshadowed by his contemporaries, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, he remains one of the major figures of 19th century Russian literature.
Turgenev realistically portrayed the peasantry and the rising intelligentsia in its attempt to move the country into a new age. There is perhaps no novelist of foreign nationality who more naturally than Ivan Turgenev inherits a niche in a library for English readers.
Turgenev came from a family of wealthy landowners in Orel Province. When Ivan's father died, his abusive mother oversaw the running of the farms and their serfs, and her two sons, Nikolay and Ivan. Turgenev’s cruel, domineering mother was a great influence in his life; her strong personality left traces on his later works. Turgenev portrayed his mother in his fiction as a tyrannous and unreasonable domestic despot. Yet Turgenev understood her real tragedy – that she desperately wanted to be loved by her sons, but the actions to which her warped character drove her repelled them. An entry in her diary, made shortly before her death, suggests that she had realized this herself: “Mother of God, my children, forgive me. And you, oh Lord, forgive me as well – for pride, this mortal sin, was always my sin.” Ivan was even afraid of her as she beat him constantly. She was eager that Turgenev should make a brilliant official career. And later, when he resigned from the Interior Ministry, she showed her disapproval by cutting down his allowance, thus forcing him to support himself by the profession he had chosen.
When his mother died, the estates were settled, and with an income of about $5,000 a year, Turgenev became a wanderer. He had, or imagined he had, very bad health, and the eminent specialists he consulted sent him from one resort to another, to Rome, the Isle of Wight, Soden, and the like.
Turgenev first attended the University of St. Petersburg. Later, at the age of 19, he traveled to Germany and entered the University of Berlin. On his way to Germany, the steamer he was traveling on caught fire and rumors spread in Russia that he had acted cowardly. This revealing experience, which followed the author throughout his life, formed later the basis for his story “A Fire at Sea.” In Germany he concentrated on studying history and philosophy, mainly the works of Georg W. F. Hegel.
After a time working as a civil servant, he met French opera singer Pauline Garcia Viardot with whom he had a lifelong platonic relationship. He lived near her or at times with her and her husband and traveled extensively with them. Viardot remained Turgenev's greatest and unfulfilled love. In his youth he had one or two affairs with servant-girls and fathered an illegitimate daughter, Paulinette.
Turgenev set up residence in France and it was here that he began writing in earnest. With the short-story cycle “A Sportsman's Sketches,” he made his reputation. Turgenev was an enthusiastic hunter. It was his experiences in the woods of his native province that supplied the material for “A Sportsman’s Sketches.” It is said that the work contributed to Tsar Aleksandr II's decision to liberate the serfs. The short pieces were written from the point of view of a young nobleman who learns to appreciate the wisdom of the peasants living on his family's estates. Traveling often between Europe and Russia, Turgenev was arrested and imprisoned for suspicious revolutionary activities. Turgenev's opinions brought him a month of detention in St. Petersburg and 18 months of house arrest.
Ivan Turgenev was a novelist, poet and playwright, known for his detailed descriptions of everyday life in 19th century Russia. Although Turgenev has been overshadowed by his contemporaries, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, he remains one of the major figures of 19th century Russian literature.
Turgenev realistically portrayed the peasantry and the rising intelligentsia in its attempt to move the country into a new age. There is perhaps no novelist of foreign nationality who more naturally than Ivan Turgenev inherits a niche in a library for English readers.
Turgenev came from a family of wealthy landowners in Orel Province. When Ivan's father died, his abusive mother oversaw the running of the farms and their serfs, and her two sons, Nikolay and Ivan. Turgenev’s cruel, domineering mother was a great influence in his life; her strong personality left traces on his later works. Turgenev portrayed his mother in his fiction as a tyrannous and unreasonable domestic despot. Yet Turgenev understood her real tragedy – that she desperately wanted to be loved by her sons, but the actions to which her warped character drove her repelled them. An entry in her diary, made shortly before her death, suggests that she had realized this herself: “Mother of God, my children, forgive me. And you, oh Lord, forgive me as well – for pride, this mortal sin, was always my sin.” Ivan was even afraid of her as she beat him constantly. She was eager that Turgenev should make a brilliant official career. And later, when he resigned from the Interior Ministry, she showed her disapproval by cutting down his allowance, thus forcing him to support himself by the profession he had chosen.
When his mother died, the estates were settled, and with an income of about $5,000 a year, Turgenev became a wanderer. He had, or imagined he had, very bad health, and the eminent specialists he consulted sent him from one resort to another, to Rome, the Isle of Wight, Soden, and the like.
Turgenev first attended the University of St. Petersburg. Later, at the age of 19, he traveled to Germany and entered the University of Berlin. On his way to Germany, the steamer he was traveling on caught fire and rumors spread in Russia that he had acted cowardly. This revealing experience, which followed the author throughout his life, formed later the basis for his story “A Fire at Sea.” In Germany he concentrated on studying history and philosophy, mainly the works of Georg W. F. Hegel.
After a time working as a civil servant, he met French opera singer Pauline Garcia Viardot with whom he had a lifelong platonic relationship. He lived near her or at times with her and her husband and traveled extensively with them. Viardot remained Turgenev's greatest and unfulfilled love. In his youth he had one or two affairs with servant-girls and fathered an illegitimate daughter, Paulinette.
Turgenev set up residence in France and it was here that he began writing in earnest. With the short-story cycle “A Sportsman's Sketches,” he made his reputation. Turgenev was an enthusiastic hunter. It was his experiences in the woods of his native province that supplied the material for “A Sportsman’s Sketches.” It is said that the work contributed to Tsar Aleksandr II's decision to liberate the serfs. The short pieces were written from the point of view of a young nobleman who learns to appreciate the wisdom of the peasants living on his family's estates. Traveling often between Europe and Russia, Turgenev was arrested and imprisoned for suspicious revolutionary activities. Turgenev's opinions brought him a month of detention in St. Petersburg and 18 months of house arrest.
consequence he also lost the majority of his readers. The novel examined the conflict between the older generation, reluctant to accept reforms, and the idealistic youth. In the central character, Bazarov, Turgenev drew a classical portrait of the mid-nineteenth-century nihilist the word was invented by the author.
"A nihilist is a man who does not bow to any authorities, who does not take any principle on trust, no matter with what respect that principle is surrounded." (from “Fathers and Sons”)
Later the temperament of a nihilist found a number of different manifestations: the terrorist, the anarchist, the atheist, the materialist, and the communist. “Fathers and Sons” was set during the six-year period of social ferment, from Russia's defeat in the Crimean War to the Emancipation of the Serfs. The central character is the young medical student and nihilist Evgeny Bazarov, who has been described as the 'first Bolshevik' in Russian literature. "I share no man's opinions; I have my own." These words became central in Turgenev’s life. The figure of Bazarov was conceived on the Isle of Wright, where Turgenev had spent three weeks in 1860.
In “Virgin Soil” Turgenev embodied the 'positive hero' Vasily Solomin. This was a new type of character, who would liberate Russia from her backwardness. At the heart of the book, full of discussions about literature, aesthetic life, emancipation, beauty and patriotic principles, is a love story in which a young woman must choose her way in life…
"You have only to look at Solomin - a head as clear as the day, and a body as strong as an ox. Isn't that a wonder in itself? Why, any man with us in Russia who has had any brains, or feelings, or a conscience, has always been a physical wreck. Solomin's heart aches just as ours does; he hates the same things that we hate, but his nerves are of iron and his body is under his full control. He's a splendid man, I tell you! Why, think of it! Here is a man with ideals, and no nonsense about him; educated and from the people, simple, yet all there... What more do you want?" (from “Virgin Soil”)
After “Fathers and Sons” failed, Turgenev lived first in Germany, and then he moved to London, where “Fathers and Sons” had had great success. He settled finally in Paris, where he lived until his death. He became a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1860 and a Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford University in 1879.
"The whole life of Andrey Nikolaevich was passed in the prompt performance of all the ceremonies established from remote times, in strict conformity with all the customs of the ancient, orthodox, holy Russian existence. He rose and went to bed, ate and drank and bathed, was merry or angry (though the second, in truth, rarely happened), even smoked his pipe and played cards (two great innovations!), not as it occurred to him to do after his own fashion, but after the law and ordinance of his fathers -- exactly and formally." (from Turgenev's “Desperate,” written in Bougival in 1881)
Among Turgenev's close friends in France was the writer Gustave Flaubert, with whom he shared
similar social and aesthetic ideals. They both rejected extremist right and left and stuck to a nonjudgmental, if somewhat pessimistic, depiction of the world. Struggling with his last, unfinished work, Turgenev wrote to Flaubert: "On certain days I feel crushed by this burden. It seems to me that I have no more marrow in my bones, and I carry on like an old post horse, worn out but courageous."
Turgenev's later works include the novellas “A King Lear of the Steppes” (1870) and “Spring Torrents,” which rank with “First Love” (1860) as his finest achievements in the genre. His last published work was a collection of meditations and anecdotes, entitled “Poems in Prose” (1883).
The writings of Turgenev have been made familiar to those unacquainted with Russian by French translations and almost all of Turgenev’s works are available in English. There are many versions in English, among which we may mention the translation of the "Nest of Nobles" under the
name of "Lisa," by Ralston, and "Virgin Soil," by Ashtoil Dilke. There is also a complete and excellent translation by Mrs. Garnett.
For example, to the English reader “On the Eve” is a charmingly drawn picture of a quiet Russian
household, with a delicate analysis of a young girl's soul, but to Russians it is also a deep and penetrating diagnosis of the destinies of the Russia during the fifties of the 19th century. From this novel on, Turgenev creates a special female character known now as “Turgenev’s young woman.”
Elena, the Russian girl, is the central figure of the novel. In comparing her with Turgenev's other women, the reader will remark that he allows us to come into close spiritual contact with her. When Elena stands before us, we know all the innermost secrets of her character; her strength of will, her serious, courageous, proud soul, her capacity for passion, all the play of her delicate idealistic nature troubled by the contradictions, aspirations, and unhappiness that the dawn of love brings to her - all this is conveyed to the reader by the simplest and the most consummate art of Turgenev.'
Background from {[https://biography.yourdictionary.com/ivan-sergeyevich-turgenev]}
"Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev Facts
The Russian novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) was a founder of the Russian realistic novel. He ranks as one of the greatest stylists in the Russian language.
The life of Ivan Turgenev is woven like a bright thread throughout Russian history of the 19th century, during the time the nation's artistic and intellectual life experienced a golden age. He knew, was related to, or fought with almost every figure of any consequence in his homeland. He was also the first Russian author to establish a European reputation, and during his long years abroad he was friends with Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, Émile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, and many other writers. Turgenev's generous enthusiasm for the work of other men made him a perfect mediator between East and West.
Parentage and Early Life
Turgenev's biography is as much the story of his encounters with strong-willed women as it is of his meetings with famous men. The first of these women was his mother, Varvara Petrovna. She was a Lutovin, an obscure family that had recently achieved enormous wealth. She was her uncle's only heir, and she ruled with an iron hand over her vast estates and 5, 000 serfs. Three years after coming into her inheritance she married Sergey Nikolayevich Turgenev, a retired colonel of cuirassiers. The Turgenevs were old stock, dating back to a Tatar prince of the 15th century. Turgenev's father, however, was forced to marry Varvara Petrovna in order to shore up his family's sagging fortunes. It was an unhappy marriage, the handsome father constantly embroiled with mistresses, and the mother running her family as despotically as she did her estates.
Turgenev was born, the second of three sons, at the family seat of Spasskoye in Orel Province on Nov. 9, 1818. He first visited Europe when he was 4 years old, when the whole family made the grand tour. His father narrowly saved Turgenev's life in Bern, where Turgenev almost fell into the bear pit. He was educated by private tutors at Spasskoye until he was 9 years old. Only French was spoken at home, so he learned Russian mainly from family servants. In 1827 he attended various preparatory schools in Moscow, entering the university there in 1833. Already he was rebelling against his aristocratic background: about the only thing known of this period is that his fellow students, struck by his democratic leanings, called him "the American."
In 1834 Turgenev transferred to the University of St. Petersburg when the family moved to the capital. The father died the same autumn. At this time Turgenev was planning to become a university professor, but he was writing poetry in his spare time. His first work, a Gothic melodrama in verse, was severely criticized by his favorite professor, P. A. Pletnyov. However, in 1838 Pletnyov published Turgenev's first poetry in Contemporary.
His Youth
Meanwhile, having finished his courses at St. Petersburg, Turgenev resolved upon further study at the University of Berlin. On the boat journey in the spring of 1837, his steamer caught fire off Travemünde. Accounts of this incident vary, but all agree that Turgenev behaved badly. Some versions say he screamed in French, "Save me, I am my widowed mother's only son!" The event rankled in his mind until his death.
In Berlin, Turgenev studied Latin, Greek, and philosophy, immersing himself in the works of G. W. F. Hegel. In July 1840 Turgenev met Mikhail Bakunin, and for a whole year they lived together, arguing philosophy day and night. In 1841 Turgenev returned to Russia. The following year was an important one. While carrying on a high-flown platonic romance with one of Bakunin's sisters, Tatyana, Turgenev entered into an earthier alliance with Avdotya Ivanov, one of his mother's seamstresses which resulted in the birth of a daughter, known in later life as Paulinette. Turgenev also did all the work for his master of arts degree except the dissertation. For various reasons he abandoned his plans for an academic career and entered the Ministry of Interior Affairs. He left the civil service—to the mutual satisfaction of both parties—after 18 months. His mother was infuriated and cut off his funds, thus forcing him to lead a rather precarious existence, complicated by the fact that everyone thought he was rich.
Turgenev met the critic Vissarion Belinsky, with whom he remained very close until the latter's death. Belinsky was instrumental in turning the young man away from vaporous poetry to a greater realism and a more natural tone. Parasha (1843) showed Turgenev to be an imitative poet in these early years (especially of Aleksandr Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov), and Turgenev later dismissed his verse as having been written before he found his true vocation.
In 1843 Turgenev met the woman with whom he struggled for the rest of his life. Pauline Viardot-Garcia belonged to a talented Spanish family of gypsies. When Turgenev first saw her, she was well on her way to becoming the reigning mezzo-soprano in European opera. She was considered by many unattractive, but her voice was remarkable, and she was a great actress. Turgenev saw her during a tour in St. Petersburg and fell immediately in love. A curious relationship began that ended only with Turgenev's death in her arms. She was married to Louis Viardot, a man 20 years her senior, a director of the Italian Opera in Paris, but her marriage was no complication because her husband was extremely permissive. The problem lay in Pauline herself, who, unlike many other women, was not especially attracted to Turgenev. She had many affairs with other men, never entering into an exclusive alliance with Turgenev, even though he devoted much of his life and fortune to her, and even though she, as well as her husband and children, lived with Turgenev for years.
From 1845 to 1847 Turgenev spent most of his time in Russia, plunging now into his nation's literary life, coming into contact with all its leading literary figures. In 1847 he went abroad, resolved to fight serfdom with his pen. That year he wrote the first of his Hunter's Sketches, "Khor and Kalinich." He also visited Salzbrunn to comfort the dying Belinsky, but he spent most of his time at Courtavenel, the Viardot summer home where he did most of his work at this time.
In 1850 Turgenev returned to Russia, where his mother lay dying. Her death made him master of 11 estates, including Spasskoye, some 30, 000 acres, with thousands of serfs. He did his best to lighten the load of these peasants, and he freed the household workers among them. In that year he wrote A Month in the Country, of all his stage pieces the one that has remained in the repertoire. A Provincial Lady was written in 1851. While Turgenev always claimed he had no dramatic talent (and he stopped writing plays in 1852), the lyrical tone of his plays has a close affinity to that of Chekhov's masterpieces, and his dramas are just as difficult to classify.
First Years of Fame
More of the Hunter's Sketches appeared at frequent intervals during these years. In many of them the serfs seemed nobler than their masters, and both master and serf seemed stunted by the institution of serfdom. The sketches angered the government. The stage for some action against Turgenev was set. In November 1852 he wrote a laudatory article on the recently dead author Nikolai Gogol. This article was not passed by the St. Petersburg censors; Turgenev then took it to Moscow, where it was published. Its publication was regarded as a "treasonable act"; he was arrested, and after a month in prison, he was put under house arrest at Spasskoye for almost 2 years. The greatest irony was that after his arrest the collected Hunter's Sketches were published in book form. The volume created a revulsion against serfdom much greater than the separate sketches had. During his month in prison Turgenev wrote "Mumu, " a piece called by Thomas Carlyle "the most pathetic story in the world."
In 1854 Turgenev was back in St. Petersburg. He had long felt the need to experiment with a longer form and after several false starts wrote his first novel, Rudin, in 7 months in 1855 (published 1856). It was a portrait of the talky, idealistic generation of the 1840s, and many readers felt its hero was modeled on Bakunin. Turgenev met Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Leo Tolstoy that same year; he was destined to quarrel with both. In 1856, on one of his frequent trips abroad, Turgenev met Harriet Beecher Stowe, the American novelist; the effect of Hunter's Sketches on the abolition of serfdom in Russia had often been compared to the effect of her Uncle Tom's Cabin on the abolition of slavery in the United States.
In 1857 Turgenev wrote "Assya, " and he also began work on A Nest of Gentlefolk. The following year on a trip to England, he met Benjamin Disraeli, William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Carlyle, and other authors. In 1859 Turgenev returned to Russia, where his A Nest of Gentlefolk had brought him great acclaim. In the spring of that year he dusted off a manuscript given him earlier by a young soldier, Vassily Karatayev, who had felt he would not survive the Crimean War (he had died soon afterward of typhus). The manuscript was an autobiographical tale, and it served as the core for Turgenev's next major work, On the Eve. When this novel was published in 1860, it created a stir: the old and rich attacked it, and the young and radical defended it. A two-edged review of this novel by N. A. Dobrolyubov in Nikolai Nekrasov's journal, Contemporary, caused Turgenev to break with that review and its increasingly radical orientation. The unhappiness this rupture with his old friend Nekrasov brought was compounded by a violent break with Tolstoy, who went as far as to threaten Turgenev with a duel. Turgenev declined, but the two were never truly close again.
In 1860 Turgenev also endured further unhappiness caused by a literary friend. Ivan Goncharov, who had been working on his novel The Precipice (1869) for many years, often discussing it with Turgenev, accused him of stealing ideas from it for On the Eve. An informal court was set up, with three authors acting as judges. They cleared Turgenev, but he was infuriated and was never again close to Goncharov (whose paranoia later became clinical).
Part of Turgenev's pain was eased by hard work on his new novel, which, when it appeared as Fathers and Sons (1862), marked a watershed in the literary, intellectual, and political life of Russia. This novel ranks as his masterpiece. Everyone was forced to take sides on the issue of Bazarov, the book's hero, and his nihilist philosophy. Bazarov became the archetype for the generation of the 1860s; he was a socialist in politics and a scientific materialist in philosophy. Conservatives accused Turgenev of prostrating himself before the younger generation, while radicals charged him with a cruel satire of their ideals. Some felt that Bazarov was a parody of the radical critic Dobrolyubov, who had died tragically young.
In 1863 Turgenev bought a villa in Baden-Baden, Germany, where he lived on a grand scale with the ever present Viardots. In 1866 Turgenev published Smoke, a novel that offended all Slavophiles and all conservative religious opinion in Russia. Many accused him of selling out to the West, of having lost contact with his homeland. The following year he was visited by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who attacked him as a slanderer of the motherland.
Last Phase
At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the Viardots fled to England, where Turgenev followed. A few months later he settled in France, first in Paris and then at his summer home on the Seine at Bougival near Paris. In these years he regularly attended dinners with Zola, Alphonse Daudet, and Maupassant. Flaubert was a particular favorite of Turgenev's. During these years Turgenev wrote several of his best-known short stories: "First Love" (1870), "A Lear of the Steppe" (1870), and "The Torrents of Spring" (1871).
In 1877 Turgenev published the novel on which he had labored for the past 6 years: Virgin Soil. It is his longest work and another of his generational studies. The story this time is of the young people of the 1870s. Fed up with the talk and empty idealism of their fathers, these young people have decided on action. The book was a best seller in Europe, but it was condemned by all factions in Russia. Turgenev was greatly disillusioned by the failure of this novel in Russia, and some of the pessimism thus generated crept into the short pieces he wrote in 1878 called Senilia (later entitled Poems in Prose).
A new misfortune occurred the winter of the following year. Turgenev had to go to Russia, after his wealthy older brother's death, to fight for a fair share of the inheritance. But this unpleasantness soon became a blessing. Turgenev's return to his native land, where he thought he was in disgrace and discredited, turned into a triumphal procession. He made up his old literary feuds, and he was even reconciled with his uncle, Nikolai, who, as his estate manager, had almost ruined him. Turgenev was feted day and night.
While Turgenev's life had always, since 1843, been bound up with Pauline Viardot-Garcia, their relationship was not a simple one in which he gave only unalloyed worship to the diva. The two had many fights but always reconciled, even long after Pauline had lost her voice and was more or less dependent upon Turgenev. He had other mistresses and even contemplated marriage with other women. He was a man of large and impressive physique— he was known in France as "that Russian giant"—and had a handsome face and great charm. During the tumult of his acclaim in 1879 he found time to pay court to an actress, the young and beautiful Maria Savina. In June, Turgenev received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.
In 1880 Turgenev returned to Russia for the unveiling of the Pushkin Memorial in Moscow. In the same year he wrote one of his most beautiful stories, "The Song of Triumphant Love." The following year he published most of the Poems in Prose and wrote the ghostly love story "Clara Milich." The prose poems that he felt to be too intimate were not published by his wish until 1930.
All his life Turgenev had been a hypochondriac; in 1882 real symptoms appeared. He was afflicted with cancer of the spine and died on Sept. 3, 1883. A huge ceremony was held at the Gare du Nord in Paris when his body was shipped back to Russia, and his interment in St. Petersburg was an occasion for national mourning.
Further Reading on Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev
David Magarshack, Turgenev: A Life (1954), is more compact than Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Turgenev: The Man, His Art and His Age (1926; rev. ed. 1959), which is overwritten and contains much that is sheer speculation. The memoirs of a woman raised by Turgenev's mother, full of racy anecdotes, were translated into English: Varvara Zhitova, The Turgenev Family (1947). An excellent study of Turgenev's literary development is Richard Freeborn, Turgenev: The Novelist's Novelist (1960). For background see Charles Moser's excellent scholarly study Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860s (1964); its chronological scope extends beyond its title.
Additional Biography Sources
Pritchett, V. S. (Victor Sawdon), The gentle barbarian: the life and work of Turgenev, New York: Ecco Press, 1986, 1977.
Schapiro, Leonard Bertram, Turgenev, his life and times, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982, 1978.
Troyat, Henri, Turgenev, New York: Dutton, 1988.
Waddington, Patrick, Turgenev and England, New York: New York University Press, 1981.
Yarmolinsky, Avrahm, Turgenev, the man, his art, and his age, New York: Octagon Books, 1977, 1959."
GIvan Sergeyevich Turgenev Facts
The Russian novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) was a founder of the Russian realistic novel. He ranks as one of the greatest stylists in the Russian language.
The life of Ivan Turgenev is woven like a bright thread throughout Russian history of the 19th century, during the time the nation's artistic and intellectual life experienced a golden age. He knew, was related to, or fought with almost every figure of any consequence in his homeland. He was also the first Russian author to establish a European reputation, and during his long years abroad he was friends with Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, Émile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, and many other writers. Turgenev's generous enthusiasm for the work of other men made him a perfect mediator between East and West.
Parentage and Early Life
Turgenev's biography is as much the story of his encounters with strong-willed women as it is of his meetings with famous men. The first of these women was his mother, Varvara Petrovna. She was a Lutovin, an obscure family that had recently achieved enormous wealth. She was her uncle's only heir, and she ruled with an iron hand over her vast estates and 5, 000 serfs. Three years after coming into her inheritance she married Sergey Nikolayevich Turgenev, a retired colonel of cuirassiers. The Turgenevs were old stock, dating back to a Tatar prince of the 15th century. Turgenev's father, however, was forced to marry Varvara Petrovna in order to shore up his family's sagging fortunes. It was an unhappy marriage, the handsome father constantly embroiled with mistresses, and the mother running her family as despotically as she did her estates.
Turgenev was born, the second of three sons, at the family seat of Spasskoye in Orel Province on Nov. 9, 1818. He first visited Europe when he was 4 years old, when the whole family made the grand tour. His father narrowly saved Turgenev's life in Bern, where Turgenev almost fell into the bear pit. He was educated by private tutors at Spasskoye until he was 9 years old. Only French was spoken at home, so he learned Russian mainly from family servants. In 1827 he attended various preparatory schools in Moscow, entering the university there in 1833. Already he was rebelling against his aristocratic background: about the only thing known of this period is that his fellow students, struck by his democratic leanings, called him "the American."
In 1834 Turgenev transferred to the University of St. Petersburg when the family moved to the capital. The father died the same autumn. At this time Turgenev was planning to become a university professor, but he was writing poetry in his spare time. His first work, a Gothic melodrama in verse, was severely criticized by his favorite professor, P. A. Pletnyov. However, in 1838 Pletnyov published Turgenev's first poetry in Contemporary.
His Youth
Meanwhile, having finished his courses at St. Petersburg, Turgenev resolved upon further study at the University of Berlin. On the boat journey in the spring of 1837, his steamer caught fire off Travemünde. Accounts of this incident vary, but all agree that Turgenev behaved badly. Some versions say he screamed in French, "Save me, I am my widowed mother's only son!" The event rankled in his mind until his death.
In Berlin, Turgenev studied Latin, Greek, and philosophy, immersing himself in the works of G. W. F. Hegel. In July 1840 Turgenev met Mikhail Bakunin, and for a whole year they lived together, arguing philosophy day and night. In 1841 Turgenev returned to Russia. The following year was an important one. While carrying on a high-flown platonic romance with one of Bakunin's sisters, Tatyana, Turgenev entered into an earthier alliance with Avdotya Ivanov, one of his mother's seamstresses which resulted in the birth of a daughter, known in later life as Paulinette. Turgenev also did all the work for his master of arts degree except the dissertation. For various reasons he abandoned his plans for an academic career and entered the Ministry of Interior Affairs. He left the civil service—to the mutual satisfaction of both parties—after 18 months. His mother was infuriated and cut off his funds, thus forcing him to lead a rather precarious existence, complicated by the fact that everyone thought he was rich.
Turgenev met the critic Vissarion Belinsky, with whom he remained very close until the latter's death. Belinsky was instrumental in turning the young man away from vaporous poetry to a greater realism and a more natural tone. Parasha (1843) showed Turgenev to be an imitative poet in these early years (especially of Aleksandr Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov), and Turgenev later dismissed his verse as having been written before he found his true vocation.
In 1843 Turgenev met the woman with whom he struggled for the rest of his life. Pauline Viardot-Garcia belonged to a talented Spanish family of gypsies. When Turgenev first saw her, she was well on her way to becoming the reigning mezzo-soprano in European opera. She was considered by many unattractive, but her voice was remarkable, and she was a great actress. Turgenev saw her during a tour in St. Petersburg and fell immediately in love. A curious relationship began that ended only with Turgenev's death in her arms. She was married to Louis Viardot, a man 20 years her senior, a director of the Italian Opera in Paris, but her marriage was no complication because her husband was extremely permissive. The problem lay in Pauline herself, who, unlike many other women, was not especially attracted to Turgenev. She had many affairs with other men, never entering into an exclusive alliance with Turgenev, even though he devoted much of his life and fortune to her, and even though she, as well as her husband and children, lived with Turgenev for years.
From 1845 to 1847 Turgenev spent most of his time in Russia, plunging now into his nation's literary life, coming into contact with all its leading literary figures. In 1847 he went abroad, resolved to fight serfdom with his pen. That year he wrote the first of his Hunter's Sketches, "Khor and Kalinich." He also visited Salzbrunn to comfort the dying Belinsky, but he spent most of his time at Courtavenel, the Viardot summer home where he did most of his work at this time.
In 1850 Turgenev returned to Russia, where his mother lay dying. Her death made him master of 11 estates, including Spasskoye, some 30, 000 acres, with thousands of serfs. He did his best to lighten the load of these peasants, and he freed the household workers among them. In that year he wrote A Month in the Country, of all his stage pieces the one that has remained in the repertoire. A Provincial Lady was written in 1851. While Turgenev always claimed he had no dramatic talent (and he stopped writing plays in 1852), the lyrical tone of his plays has a close affinity to that of Chekhov's masterpieces, and his dramas are just as difficult to classify.
First Years of Fame
More of the Hunter's Sketches appeared at frequent intervals during these years. In many of them the serfs seemed nobler than their masters, and both master and serf seemed stunted by the institution of serfdom. The sketches angered the government. The stage for some action against Turgenev was set. In November 1852 he wrote a laudatory article on the recently dead author Nikolai Gogol. This article was not passed by the St. Petersburg censors; Turgenev then took it to Moscow, where it was published. Its publication was regarded as a "treasonable act"; he was arrested, and after a month in prison, he was put under house arrest at Spasskoye for almost 2 years. The greatest irony was that after his arrest the collected Hunter's Sketches were published in book form. The volume created a revulsion against serfdom much greater than the separate sketches had. During his month in prison Turgenev wrote "Mumu, " a piece called by Thomas Carlyle "the most pathetic story in the world."
In 1854 Turgenev was back in St. Petersburg. He had long felt the need to experiment with a longer form and after several false starts wrote his first novel, Rudin, in 7 months in 1855 (published 1856). It was a portrait of the talky, idealistic generation of the 1840s, and many readers felt its hero was modeled on Bakunin. Turgenev met Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Leo Tolstoy that same year; he was destined to quarrel with both. In 1856, on one of his frequent trips abroad, Turgenev met Harriet Beecher Stowe, the American novelist; the effect of Hunter's Sketches on the abolition of serfdom in Russia had often been compared to the effect of her Uncle Tom's Cabin on the abolition of slavery in the United States.
In 1857 Turgenev wrote "Assya, " and he also began work on A Nest of Gentlefolk. The following year on a trip to England, he met Benjamin Disraeli, William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Carlyle, and other authors. In 1859 Turgenev returned to Russia, where his A Nest of Gentlefolk had brought him great acclaim. In the spring of that year he dusted off a manuscript given him earlier by a young soldier, Vassily Karatayev, who had felt he would not survive the Crimean War (he had died soon afterward of typhus). The manuscript was an autobiographical tale, and it served as the core for Turgenev's next major work, On the Eve. When this novel was published in 1860, it created a stir: the old and rich attacked it, and the young and radical defended it. A two-edged review of this novel by N. A. Dobrolyubov in Nikolai Nekrasov's journal, Contemporary, caused Turgenev to break with that review and its increasingly radical orientation. The unhappiness this rupture with his old friend Nekrasov brought was compounded by a violent break with Tolstoy, who went as far as to threaten Turgenev with a duel. Turgenev declined, but the two were never truly close again.
In 1860 Turgenev also endured further unhappiness caused by a literary friend. Ivan Goncharov, who had been working on his novel The Precipice (1869) for many years, often discussing it with Turgenev, accused him of stealing ideas from it for On the Eve. An informal court was set up, with three authors acting as judges. They cleared Turgenev, but he was infuriated and was never again close to Goncharov (whose paranoia later became clinical).
Part of Turgenev's pain was eased by hard work on his new novel, which, when it appeared as Fathers and Sons (1862), marked a watershed in the literary, intellectual, and political life of Russia. This novel ranks as his masterpiece. Everyone was forced to take sides on the issue of Bazarov, the book's hero, and his nihilist philosophy. Bazarov became the archetype for the generation of the 1860s; he was a socialist in politics and a scientific materialist in philosophy. Conservatives accused Turgenev of prostrating himself before the younger generation, while radicals charged him with a cruel satire of their ideals. Some felt that Bazarov was a parody of the radical critic Dobrolyubov, who had died tragically young.
In 1863 Turgenev bought a villa in Baden-Baden, Germany, where he lived on a grand scale with the ever present Viardots. In 1866 Turgenev published Smoke, a novel that offended all Slavophiles and all conservative religious opinion in Russia. Many accused him of selling out to the West, of having lost contact with his homeland. The following year he was visited by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who attacked him as a slanderer of the motherland.
Last Phase
At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the Viardots fled to England, where Turgenev followed. A few months later he settled in France, first in Paris and then at his summer home on the Seine at Bougival near Paris. In these years he regularly attended dinners with Zola, Alphonse Daudet, and Maupassant. Flaubert was a particular favorite of Turgenev's. During these years Turgenev wrote several of his best-known short stories: "First Love" (1870), "A Lear of the Steppe" (1870), and "The Torrents of Spring" (1871).
In 1877 Turgenev published the novel on which he had labored for the past 6 years: Virgin Soil. It is his longest work and another of his generational studies. The story this time is of the young people of the 1870s. Fed up with the talk and empty idealism of their fathers, these young people have decided on action. The book was a best seller in Europe, but it was condemned by all factions in Russia. Turgenev was greatly disillusioned by the failure of this novel in Russia, and some of the pessimism thus generated crept into the short pieces he wrote in 1878 called Senilia (later entitled Poems in Prose).
A new misfortune occurred the winter of the following year. Turgenev had to go to Russia, after his wealthy older brother's death, to fight for a fair share of the inheritance. But this unpleasantness soon became a blessing. Turgenev's return to his native land, where he thought he was in disgrace and discredited, turned into a triumphal procession. He made up his old literary feuds, and he was even reconciled with his uncle, Nikolai, who, as his estate manager, had almost ruined him. Turgenev was feted day and night.
While Turgenev's life had always, since 1843, been bound up with Pauline Viardot-Garcia, their relationship was not a simple one in which he gave only unalloyed worship to the diva. The two had many fights but always reconciled, even long after Pauline had lost her voice and was more or less dependent upon Turgenev. He had other mistresses and even contemplated marriage with other women. He was a man of large and impressive physique— he was known in France as "that Russian giant"—and had a handsome face and great charm. During the tumult of his acclaim in 1879 he found time to pay court to an actress, the young and beautiful Maria Savina. In June, Turgenev received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.
In 1880 Turgenev returned to Russia for the unveiling of the Pushkin Memorial in Moscow. In the same year he wrote one of his most beautiful stories, "The Song of Triumphant Love." The following year he published most of the Poems in Prose and wrote the ghostly love story "Clara Milich." The prose poems that he felt to be too intimate were not published by his wish until 1930.
All his life Turgenev had been a hypochondriac; in 1882 real symptoms appeared. He was afflicted with cancer of the spine and died on Sept. 3, 1883. A huge ceremony was held at the Gare du Nord in Paris when his body was shipped back to Russia, and his interment in St. Petersburg was an occasion for national mourning.
Further Reading on Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev
David Magarshack, Turgenev: A Life (1954), is more compact than Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Turgenev: The Man, His Art and His Age (1926; rev. ed. 1959), which is overwritten and contains much that is sheer speculation. The memoirs of a woman raised by Turgenev's mother, full of racy anecdotes, were translated into English: Varvara Zhitova, The Turgenev Family (1947). An excellent study of Turgenev's literary development is Richard Freeborn, Turgenev: The Novelist's Novelist (1960). For background see Charles Moser's excellent scholarly study Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860s (1964); its chronological scope extends beyond its title.
Additional Biography Sources
Pritchett, V. S. (Victor Sawdon), The gentle barbarian: the life and work of Turgenev, New York: Ecco Press, 1986, 1977.
Schapiro, Leonard Bertram, Turgenev, his life and times, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982, 1978.
Troyat, Henri, Turgenev, New York: Dutton, 1988.
Waddington, Patrick, Turgenev and England, New York: New York University Press, 1981.
Yarmolinsky, Avrahm, Turgenev, the man, his art, and his age, New York: Octagon Books, 1977, 1959.
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Five Great Russian Writers Ivan Turgenev by Jason Burns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTRm5r8V0uo
Image:
1. 'Ivan Turgenev' 1874 painting by Ilya Repin
2. opera singer Pauline Viardot who had a life-long affair with Ivan Turgenev
3. Ivan Turgenev 'The past was a dream wasn’t it. And who ever remembers dreams.'
4. Louise Héritte-Viardot daughter of Ivan Turgenev and Pauline Viardot
Background from {[https://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/ivan-turgenev/]}
Prominent Russians: Ivan Turgenev
October 28, 1818 – September 3, 1883
Ivan Turgenev was a novelist, poet and playwright, known for his detailed descriptions of everyday life in 19th century Russia. Although Turgenev has been overshadowed by his contemporaries, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, he remains one of the major figures of 19th century Russian literature.
Turgenev realistically portrayed the peasantry and the rising intelligentsia in its attempt to move the country into a new age. There is perhaps no novelist of foreign nationality who more naturally than Ivan Turgenev inherits a niche in a library for English readers.
Turgenev came from a family of wealthy landowners in Orel Province. When Ivan's father died, his abusive mother oversaw the running of the farms and their serfs, and her two sons, Nikolay and Ivan. Turgenev’s cruel, domineering mother was a great influence in his life; her strong personality left traces on his later works. Turgenev portrayed his mother in his fiction as a tyrannous and unreasonable domestic despot. Yet Turgenev understood her real tragedy – that she desperately wanted to be loved by her sons, but the actions to which her warped character drove her repelled them. An entry in her diary, made shortly before her death, suggests that she had realized this herself: “Mother of God, my children, forgive me. And you, oh Lord, forgive me as well – for pride, this mortal sin, was always my sin.” Ivan was even afraid of her as she beat him constantly. She was eager that Turgenev should make a brilliant official career. And later, when he resigned from the Interior Ministry, she showed her disapproval by cutting down his allowance, thus forcing him to support himself by the profession he had chosen.
When his mother died, the estates were settled, and with an income of about $5,000 a year, Turgenev became a wanderer. He had, or imagined he had, very bad health, and the eminent specialists he consulted sent him from one resort to another, to Rome, the Isle of Wight, Soden, and the like.
Turgenev first attended the University of St. Petersburg. Later, at the age of 19, he traveled to Germany and entered the University of Berlin. On his way to Germany, the steamer he was traveling on caught fire and rumors spread in Russia that he had acted cowardly. This revealing experience, which followed the author throughout his life, formed later the basis for his story “A Fire at Sea.” In Germany he concentrated on studying history and philosophy, mainly the works of Georg W. F. Hegel.
After a time working as a civil servant, he met French opera singer Pauline Garcia Viardot with whom he had a lifelong platonic relationship. He lived near her or at times with her and her husband and traveled extensively with them. Viardot remained Turgenev's greatest and unfulfilled love. In his youth he had one or two affairs with servant-girls and fathered an illegitimate daughter, Paulinette.
Turgenev set up residence in France and it was here that he began writing in earnest. With the short-story cycle “A Sportsman's Sketches,” he made his reputation. Turgenev was an enthusiastic hunter. It was his experiences in the woods of his native province that supplied the material for “A Sportsman’s Sketches.” It is said that the work contributed to Tsar Aleksandr II's decision to liberate the serfs. The short pieces were written from the point of view of a young nobleman who learns to appreciate the wisdom of the peasants living on his family's estates. Traveling often between Europe and Russia, Turgenev was arrested and imprisoned for suspicious revolutionary activities. Turgenev's opinions brought him a month of detention in St. Petersburg and 18 months of house arrest.
Ivan Turgenev was a novelist, poet and playwright, known for his detailed descriptions of everyday life in 19th century Russia. Although Turgenev has been overshadowed by his contemporaries, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, he remains one of the major figures of 19th century Russian literature.
Turgenev realistically portrayed the peasantry and the rising intelligentsia in its attempt to move the country into a new age. There is perhaps no novelist of foreign nationality who more naturally than Ivan Turgenev inherits a niche in a library for English readers.
Turgenev came from a family of wealthy landowners in Orel Province. When Ivan's father died, his abusive mother oversaw the running of the farms and their serfs, and her two sons, Nikolay and Ivan. Turgenev’s cruel, domineering mother was a great influence in his life; her strong personality left traces on his later works. Turgenev portrayed his mother in his fiction as a tyrannous and unreasonable domestic despot. Yet Turgenev understood her real tragedy – that she desperately wanted to be loved by her sons, but the actions to which her warped character drove her repelled them. An entry in her diary, made shortly before her death, suggests that she had realized this herself: “Mother of God, my children, forgive me. And you, oh Lord, forgive me as well – for pride, this mortal sin, was always my sin.” Ivan was even afraid of her as she beat him constantly. She was eager that Turgenev should make a brilliant official career. And later, when he resigned from the Interior Ministry, she showed her disapproval by cutting down his allowance, thus forcing him to support himself by the profession he had chosen.
When his mother died, the estates were settled, and with an income of about $5,000 a year, Turgenev became a wanderer. He had, or imagined he had, very bad health, and the eminent specialists he consulted sent him from one resort to another, to Rome, the Isle of Wight, Soden, and the like.
Turgenev first attended the University of St. Petersburg. Later, at the age of 19, he traveled to Germany and entered the University of Berlin. On his way to Germany, the steamer he was traveling on caught fire and rumors spread in Russia that he had acted cowardly. This revealing experience, which followed the author throughout his life, formed later the basis for his story “A Fire at Sea.” In Germany he concentrated on studying history and philosophy, mainly the works of Georg W. F. Hegel.
After a time working as a civil servant, he met French opera singer Pauline Garcia Viardot with whom he had a lifelong platonic relationship. He lived near her or at times with her and her husband and traveled extensively with them. Viardot remained Turgenev's greatest and unfulfilled love. In his youth he had one or two affairs with servant-girls and fathered an illegitimate daughter, Paulinette.
Turgenev set up residence in France and it was here that he began writing in earnest. With the short-story cycle “A Sportsman's Sketches,” he made his reputation. Turgenev was an enthusiastic hunter. It was his experiences in the woods of his native province that supplied the material for “A Sportsman’s Sketches.” It is said that the work contributed to Tsar Aleksandr II's decision to liberate the serfs. The short pieces were written from the point of view of a young nobleman who learns to appreciate the wisdom of the peasants living on his family's estates. Traveling often between Europe and Russia, Turgenev was arrested and imprisoned for suspicious revolutionary activities. Turgenev's opinions brought him a month of detention in St. Petersburg and 18 months of house arrest.
consequence he also lost the majority of his readers. The novel examined the conflict between the older generation, reluctant to accept reforms, and the idealistic youth. In the central character, Bazarov, Turgenev drew a classical portrait of the mid-nineteenth-century nihilist the word was invented by the author.
"A nihilist is a man who does not bow to any authorities, who does not take any principle on trust, no matter with what respect that principle is surrounded." (from “Fathers and Sons”)
Later the temperament of a nihilist found a number of different manifestations: the terrorist, the anarchist, the atheist, the materialist, and the communist. “Fathers and Sons” was set during the six-year period of social ferment, from Russia's defeat in the Crimean War to the Emancipation of the Serfs. The central character is the young medical student and nihilist Evgeny Bazarov, who has been described as the 'first Bolshevik' in Russian literature. "I share no man's opinions; I have my own." These words became central in Turgenev’s life. The figure of Bazarov was conceived on the Isle of Wright, where Turgenev had spent three weeks in 1860.
In “Virgin Soil” Turgenev embodied the 'positive hero' Vasily Solomin. This was a new type of character, who would liberate Russia from her backwardness. At the heart of the book, full of discussions about literature, aesthetic life, emancipation, beauty and patriotic principles, is a love story in which a young woman must choose her way in life…
"You have only to look at Solomin - a head as clear as the day, and a body as strong as an ox. Isn't that a wonder in itself? Why, any man with us in Russia who has had any brains, or feelings, or a conscience, has always been a physical wreck. Solomin's heart aches just as ours does; he hates the same things that we hate, but his nerves are of iron and his body is under his full control. He's a splendid man, I tell you! Why, think of it! Here is a man with ideals, and no nonsense about him; educated and from the people, simple, yet all there... What more do you want?" (from “Virgin Soil”)
After “Fathers and Sons” failed, Turgenev lived first in Germany, and then he moved to London, where “Fathers and Sons” had had great success. He settled finally in Paris, where he lived until his death. He became a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1860 and a Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford University in 1879.
"The whole life of Andrey Nikolaevich was passed in the prompt performance of all the ceremonies established from remote times, in strict conformity with all the customs of the ancient, orthodox, holy Russian existence. He rose and went to bed, ate and drank and bathed, was merry or angry (though the second, in truth, rarely happened), even smoked his pipe and played cards (two great innovations!), not as it occurred to him to do after his own fashion, but after the law and ordinance of his fathers -- exactly and formally." (from Turgenev's “Desperate,” written in Bougival in 1881)
Among Turgenev's close friends in France was the writer Gustave Flaubert, with whom he shared
similar social and aesthetic ideals. They both rejected extremist right and left and stuck to a nonjudgmental, if somewhat pessimistic, depiction of the world. Struggling with his last, unfinished work, Turgenev wrote to Flaubert: "On certain days I feel crushed by this burden. It seems to me that I have no more marrow in my bones, and I carry on like an old post horse, worn out but courageous."
Turgenev's later works include the novellas “A King Lear of the Steppes” (1870) and “Spring Torrents,” which rank with “First Love” (1860) as his finest achievements in the genre. His last published work was a collection of meditations and anecdotes, entitled “Poems in Prose” (1883).
The writings of Turgenev have been made familiar to those unacquainted with Russian by French translations and almost all of Turgenev’s works are available in English. There are many versions in English, among which we may mention the translation of the "Nest of Nobles" under the
name of "Lisa," by Ralston, and "Virgin Soil," by Ashtoil Dilke. There is also a complete and excellent translation by Mrs. Garnett.
For example, to the English reader “On the Eve” is a charmingly drawn picture of a quiet Russian
household, with a delicate analysis of a young girl's soul, but to Russians it is also a deep and penetrating diagnosis of the destinies of the Russia during the fifties of the 19th century. From this novel on, Turgenev creates a special female character known now as “Turgenev’s young woman.”
Elena, the Russian girl, is the central figure of the novel. In comparing her with Turgenev's other women, the reader will remark that he allows us to come into close spiritual contact with her. When Elena stands before us, we know all the innermost secrets of her character; her strength of will, her serious, courageous, proud soul, her capacity for passion, all the play of her delicate idealistic nature troubled by the contradictions, aspirations, and unhappiness that the dawn of love brings to her - all this is conveyed to the reader by the simplest and the most consummate art of Turgenev.'
Background from {[https://biography.yourdictionary.com/ivan-sergeyevich-turgenev]}
"Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev Facts
The Russian novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) was a founder of the Russian realistic novel. He ranks as one of the greatest stylists in the Russian language.
The life of Ivan Turgenev is woven like a bright thread throughout Russian history of the 19th century, during the time the nation's artistic and intellectual life experienced a golden age. He knew, was related to, or fought with almost every figure of any consequence in his homeland. He was also the first Russian author to establish a European reputation, and during his long years abroad he was friends with Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, Émile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, and many other writers. Turgenev's generous enthusiasm for the work of other men made him a perfect mediator between East and West.
Parentage and Early Life
Turgenev's biography is as much the story of his encounters with strong-willed women as it is of his meetings with famous men. The first of these women was his mother, Varvara Petrovna. She was a Lutovin, an obscure family that had recently achieved enormous wealth. She was her uncle's only heir, and she ruled with an iron hand over her vast estates and 5, 000 serfs. Three years after coming into her inheritance she married Sergey Nikolayevich Turgenev, a retired colonel of cuirassiers. The Turgenevs were old stock, dating back to a Tatar prince of the 15th century. Turgenev's father, however, was forced to marry Varvara Petrovna in order to shore up his family's sagging fortunes. It was an unhappy marriage, the handsome father constantly embroiled with mistresses, and the mother running her family as despotically as she did her estates.
Turgenev was born, the second of three sons, at the family seat of Spasskoye in Orel Province on Nov. 9, 1818. He first visited Europe when he was 4 years old, when the whole family made the grand tour. His father narrowly saved Turgenev's life in Bern, where Turgenev almost fell into the bear pit. He was educated by private tutors at Spasskoye until he was 9 years old. Only French was spoken at home, so he learned Russian mainly from family servants. In 1827 he attended various preparatory schools in Moscow, entering the university there in 1833. Already he was rebelling against his aristocratic background: about the only thing known of this period is that his fellow students, struck by his democratic leanings, called him "the American."
In 1834 Turgenev transferred to the University of St. Petersburg when the family moved to the capital. The father died the same autumn. At this time Turgenev was planning to become a university professor, but he was writing poetry in his spare time. His first work, a Gothic melodrama in verse, was severely criticized by his favorite professor, P. A. Pletnyov. However, in 1838 Pletnyov published Turgenev's first poetry in Contemporary.
His Youth
Meanwhile, having finished his courses at St. Petersburg, Turgenev resolved upon further study at the University of Berlin. On the boat journey in the spring of 1837, his steamer caught fire off Travemünde. Accounts of this incident vary, but all agree that Turgenev behaved badly. Some versions say he screamed in French, "Save me, I am my widowed mother's only son!" The event rankled in his mind until his death.
In Berlin, Turgenev studied Latin, Greek, and philosophy, immersing himself in the works of G. W. F. Hegel. In July 1840 Turgenev met Mikhail Bakunin, and for a whole year they lived together, arguing philosophy day and night. In 1841 Turgenev returned to Russia. The following year was an important one. While carrying on a high-flown platonic romance with one of Bakunin's sisters, Tatyana, Turgenev entered into an earthier alliance with Avdotya Ivanov, one of his mother's seamstresses which resulted in the birth of a daughter, known in later life as Paulinette. Turgenev also did all the work for his master of arts degree except the dissertation. For various reasons he abandoned his plans for an academic career and entered the Ministry of Interior Affairs. He left the civil service—to the mutual satisfaction of both parties—after 18 months. His mother was infuriated and cut off his funds, thus forcing him to lead a rather precarious existence, complicated by the fact that everyone thought he was rich.
Turgenev met the critic Vissarion Belinsky, with whom he remained very close until the latter's death. Belinsky was instrumental in turning the young man away from vaporous poetry to a greater realism and a more natural tone. Parasha (1843) showed Turgenev to be an imitative poet in these early years (especially of Aleksandr Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov), and Turgenev later dismissed his verse as having been written before he found his true vocation.
In 1843 Turgenev met the woman with whom he struggled for the rest of his life. Pauline Viardot-Garcia belonged to a talented Spanish family of gypsies. When Turgenev first saw her, she was well on her way to becoming the reigning mezzo-soprano in European opera. She was considered by many unattractive, but her voice was remarkable, and she was a great actress. Turgenev saw her during a tour in St. Petersburg and fell immediately in love. A curious relationship began that ended only with Turgenev's death in her arms. She was married to Louis Viardot, a man 20 years her senior, a director of the Italian Opera in Paris, but her marriage was no complication because her husband was extremely permissive. The problem lay in Pauline herself, who, unlike many other women, was not especially attracted to Turgenev. She had many affairs with other men, never entering into an exclusive alliance with Turgenev, even though he devoted much of his life and fortune to her, and even though she, as well as her husband and children, lived with Turgenev for years.
From 1845 to 1847 Turgenev spent most of his time in Russia, plunging now into his nation's literary life, coming into contact with all its leading literary figures. In 1847 he went abroad, resolved to fight serfdom with his pen. That year he wrote the first of his Hunter's Sketches, "Khor and Kalinich." He also visited Salzbrunn to comfort the dying Belinsky, but he spent most of his time at Courtavenel, the Viardot summer home where he did most of his work at this time.
In 1850 Turgenev returned to Russia, where his mother lay dying. Her death made him master of 11 estates, including Spasskoye, some 30, 000 acres, with thousands of serfs. He did his best to lighten the load of these peasants, and he freed the household workers among them. In that year he wrote A Month in the Country, of all his stage pieces the one that has remained in the repertoire. A Provincial Lady was written in 1851. While Turgenev always claimed he had no dramatic talent (and he stopped writing plays in 1852), the lyrical tone of his plays has a close affinity to that of Chekhov's masterpieces, and his dramas are just as difficult to classify.
First Years of Fame
More of the Hunter's Sketches appeared at frequent intervals during these years. In many of them the serfs seemed nobler than their masters, and both master and serf seemed stunted by the institution of serfdom. The sketches angered the government. The stage for some action against Turgenev was set. In November 1852 he wrote a laudatory article on the recently dead author Nikolai Gogol. This article was not passed by the St. Petersburg censors; Turgenev then took it to Moscow, where it was published. Its publication was regarded as a "treasonable act"; he was arrested, and after a month in prison, he was put under house arrest at Spasskoye for almost 2 years. The greatest irony was that after his arrest the collected Hunter's Sketches were published in book form. The volume created a revulsion against serfdom much greater than the separate sketches had. During his month in prison Turgenev wrote "Mumu, " a piece called by Thomas Carlyle "the most pathetic story in the world."
In 1854 Turgenev was back in St. Petersburg. He had long felt the need to experiment with a longer form and after several false starts wrote his first novel, Rudin, in 7 months in 1855 (published 1856). It was a portrait of the talky, idealistic generation of the 1840s, and many readers felt its hero was modeled on Bakunin. Turgenev met Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Leo Tolstoy that same year; he was destined to quarrel with both. In 1856, on one of his frequent trips abroad, Turgenev met Harriet Beecher Stowe, the American novelist; the effect of Hunter's Sketches on the abolition of serfdom in Russia had often been compared to the effect of her Uncle Tom's Cabin on the abolition of slavery in the United States.
In 1857 Turgenev wrote "Assya, " and he also began work on A Nest of Gentlefolk. The following year on a trip to England, he met Benjamin Disraeli, William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Carlyle, and other authors. In 1859 Turgenev returned to Russia, where his A Nest of Gentlefolk had brought him great acclaim. In the spring of that year he dusted off a manuscript given him earlier by a young soldier, Vassily Karatayev, who had felt he would not survive the Crimean War (he had died soon afterward of typhus). The manuscript was an autobiographical tale, and it served as the core for Turgenev's next major work, On the Eve. When this novel was published in 1860, it created a stir: the old and rich attacked it, and the young and radical defended it. A two-edged review of this novel by N. A. Dobrolyubov in Nikolai Nekrasov's journal, Contemporary, caused Turgenev to break with that review and its increasingly radical orientation. The unhappiness this rupture with his old friend Nekrasov brought was compounded by a violent break with Tolstoy, who went as far as to threaten Turgenev with a duel. Turgenev declined, but the two were never truly close again.
In 1860 Turgenev also endured further unhappiness caused by a literary friend. Ivan Goncharov, who had been working on his novel The Precipice (1869) for many years, often discussing it with Turgenev, accused him of stealing ideas from it for On the Eve. An informal court was set up, with three authors acting as judges. They cleared Turgenev, but he was infuriated and was never again close to Goncharov (whose paranoia later became clinical).
Part of Turgenev's pain was eased by hard work on his new novel, which, when it appeared as Fathers and Sons (1862), marked a watershed in the literary, intellectual, and political life of Russia. This novel ranks as his masterpiece. Everyone was forced to take sides on the issue of Bazarov, the book's hero, and his nihilist philosophy. Bazarov became the archetype for the generation of the 1860s; he was a socialist in politics and a scientific materialist in philosophy. Conservatives accused Turgenev of prostrating himself before the younger generation, while radicals charged him with a cruel satire of their ideals. Some felt that Bazarov was a parody of the radical critic Dobrolyubov, who had died tragically young.
In 1863 Turgenev bought a villa in Baden-Baden, Germany, where he lived on a grand scale with the ever present Viardots. In 1866 Turgenev published Smoke, a novel that offended all Slavophiles and all conservative religious opinion in Russia. Many accused him of selling out to the West, of having lost contact with his homeland. The following year he was visited by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who attacked him as a slanderer of the motherland.
Last Phase
At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the Viardots fled to England, where Turgenev followed. A few months later he settled in France, first in Paris and then at his summer home on the Seine at Bougival near Paris. In these years he regularly attended dinners with Zola, Alphonse Daudet, and Maupassant. Flaubert was a particular favorite of Turgenev's. During these years Turgenev wrote several of his best-known short stories: "First Love" (1870), "A Lear of the Steppe" (1870), and "The Torrents of Spring" (1871).
In 1877 Turgenev published the novel on which he had labored for the past 6 years: Virgin Soil. It is his longest work and another of his generational studies. The story this time is of the young people of the 1870s. Fed up with the talk and empty idealism of their fathers, these young people have decided on action. The book was a best seller in Europe, but it was condemned by all factions in Russia. Turgenev was greatly disillusioned by the failure of this novel in Russia, and some of the pessimism thus generated crept into the short pieces he wrote in 1878 called Senilia (later entitled Poems in Prose).
A new misfortune occurred the winter of the following year. Turgenev had to go to Russia, after his wealthy older brother's death, to fight for a fair share of the inheritance. But this unpleasantness soon became a blessing. Turgenev's return to his native land, where he thought he was in disgrace and discredited, turned into a triumphal procession. He made up his old literary feuds, and he was even reconciled with his uncle, Nikolai, who, as his estate manager, had almost ruined him. Turgenev was feted day and night.
While Turgenev's life had always, since 1843, been bound up with Pauline Viardot-Garcia, their relationship was not a simple one in which he gave only unalloyed worship to the diva. The two had many fights but always reconciled, even long after Pauline had lost her voice and was more or less dependent upon Turgenev. He had other mistresses and even contemplated marriage with other women. He was a man of large and impressive physique— he was known in France as "that Russian giant"—and had a handsome face and great charm. During the tumult of his acclaim in 1879 he found time to pay court to an actress, the young and beautiful Maria Savina. In June, Turgenev received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.
In 1880 Turgenev returned to Russia for the unveiling of the Pushkin Memorial in Moscow. In the same year he wrote one of his most beautiful stories, "The Song of Triumphant Love." The following year he published most of the Poems in Prose and wrote the ghostly love story "Clara Milich." The prose poems that he felt to be too intimate were not published by his wish until 1930.
All his life Turgenev had been a hypochondriac; in 1882 real symptoms appeared. He was afflicted with cancer of the spine and died on Sept. 3, 1883. A huge ceremony was held at the Gare du Nord in Paris when his body was shipped back to Russia, and his interment in St. Petersburg was an occasion for national mourning.
Further Reading on Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev
David Magarshack, Turgenev: A Life (1954), is more compact than Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Turgenev: The Man, His Art and His Age (1926; rev. ed. 1959), which is overwritten and contains much that is sheer speculation. The memoirs of a woman raised by Turgenev's mother, full of racy anecdotes, were translated into English: Varvara Zhitova, The Turgenev Family (1947). An excellent study of Turgenev's literary development is Richard Freeborn, Turgenev: The Novelist's Novelist (1960). For background see Charles Moser's excellent scholarly study Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860s (1964); its chronological scope extends beyond its title.
Additional Biography Sources
Pritchett, V. S. (Victor Sawdon), The gentle barbarian: the life and work of Turgenev, New York: Ecco Press, 1986, 1977.
Schapiro, Leonard Bertram, Turgenev, his life and times, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982, 1978.
Troyat, Henri, Turgenev, New York: Dutton, 1988.
Waddington, Patrick, Turgenev and England, New York: New York University Press, 1981.
Yarmolinsky, Avrahm, Turgenev, the man, his art, and his age, New York: Octagon Books, 1977, 1959."
GIvan Sergeyevich Turgenev Facts
The Russian novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) was a founder of the Russian realistic novel. He ranks as one of the greatest stylists in the Russian language.
The life of Ivan Turgenev is woven like a bright thread throughout Russian history of the 19th century, during the time the nation's artistic and intellectual life experienced a golden age. He knew, was related to, or fought with almost every figure of any consequence in his homeland. He was also the first Russian author to establish a European reputation, and during his long years abroad he was friends with Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, Émile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, and many other writers. Turgenev's generous enthusiasm for the work of other men made him a perfect mediator between East and West.
Parentage and Early Life
Turgenev's biography is as much the story of his encounters with strong-willed women as it is of his meetings with famous men. The first of these women was his mother, Varvara Petrovna. She was a Lutovin, an obscure family that had recently achieved enormous wealth. She was her uncle's only heir, and she ruled with an iron hand over her vast estates and 5, 000 serfs. Three years after coming into her inheritance she married Sergey Nikolayevich Turgenev, a retired colonel of cuirassiers. The Turgenevs were old stock, dating back to a Tatar prince of the 15th century. Turgenev's father, however, was forced to marry Varvara Petrovna in order to shore up his family's sagging fortunes. It was an unhappy marriage, the handsome father constantly embroiled with mistresses, and the mother running her family as despotically as she did her estates.
Turgenev was born, the second of three sons, at the family seat of Spasskoye in Orel Province on Nov. 9, 1818. He first visited Europe when he was 4 years old, when the whole family made the grand tour. His father narrowly saved Turgenev's life in Bern, where Turgenev almost fell into the bear pit. He was educated by private tutors at Spasskoye until he was 9 years old. Only French was spoken at home, so he learned Russian mainly from family servants. In 1827 he attended various preparatory schools in Moscow, entering the university there in 1833. Already he was rebelling against his aristocratic background: about the only thing known of this period is that his fellow students, struck by his democratic leanings, called him "the American."
In 1834 Turgenev transferred to the University of St. Petersburg when the family moved to the capital. The father died the same autumn. At this time Turgenev was planning to become a university professor, but he was writing poetry in his spare time. His first work, a Gothic melodrama in verse, was severely criticized by his favorite professor, P. A. Pletnyov. However, in 1838 Pletnyov published Turgenev's first poetry in Contemporary.
His Youth
Meanwhile, having finished his courses at St. Petersburg, Turgenev resolved upon further study at the University of Berlin. On the boat journey in the spring of 1837, his steamer caught fire off Travemünde. Accounts of this incident vary, but all agree that Turgenev behaved badly. Some versions say he screamed in French, "Save me, I am my widowed mother's only son!" The event rankled in his mind until his death.
In Berlin, Turgenev studied Latin, Greek, and philosophy, immersing himself in the works of G. W. F. Hegel. In July 1840 Turgenev met Mikhail Bakunin, and for a whole year they lived together, arguing philosophy day and night. In 1841 Turgenev returned to Russia. The following year was an important one. While carrying on a high-flown platonic romance with one of Bakunin's sisters, Tatyana, Turgenev entered into an earthier alliance with Avdotya Ivanov, one of his mother's seamstresses which resulted in the birth of a daughter, known in later life as Paulinette. Turgenev also did all the work for his master of arts degree except the dissertation. For various reasons he abandoned his plans for an academic career and entered the Ministry of Interior Affairs. He left the civil service—to the mutual satisfaction of both parties—after 18 months. His mother was infuriated and cut off his funds, thus forcing him to lead a rather precarious existence, complicated by the fact that everyone thought he was rich.
Turgenev met the critic Vissarion Belinsky, with whom he remained very close until the latter's death. Belinsky was instrumental in turning the young man away from vaporous poetry to a greater realism and a more natural tone. Parasha (1843) showed Turgenev to be an imitative poet in these early years (especially of Aleksandr Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov), and Turgenev later dismissed his verse as having been written before he found his true vocation.
In 1843 Turgenev met the woman with whom he struggled for the rest of his life. Pauline Viardot-Garcia belonged to a talented Spanish family of gypsies. When Turgenev first saw her, she was well on her way to becoming the reigning mezzo-soprano in European opera. She was considered by many unattractive, but her voice was remarkable, and she was a great actress. Turgenev saw her during a tour in St. Petersburg and fell immediately in love. A curious relationship began that ended only with Turgenev's death in her arms. She was married to Louis Viardot, a man 20 years her senior, a director of the Italian Opera in Paris, but her marriage was no complication because her husband was extremely permissive. The problem lay in Pauline herself, who, unlike many other women, was not especially attracted to Turgenev. She had many affairs with other men, never entering into an exclusive alliance with Turgenev, even though he devoted much of his life and fortune to her, and even though she, as well as her husband and children, lived with Turgenev for years.
From 1845 to 1847 Turgenev spent most of his time in Russia, plunging now into his nation's literary life, coming into contact with all its leading literary figures. In 1847 he went abroad, resolved to fight serfdom with his pen. That year he wrote the first of his Hunter's Sketches, "Khor and Kalinich." He also visited Salzbrunn to comfort the dying Belinsky, but he spent most of his time at Courtavenel, the Viardot summer home where he did most of his work at this time.
In 1850 Turgenev returned to Russia, where his mother lay dying. Her death made him master of 11 estates, including Spasskoye, some 30, 000 acres, with thousands of serfs. He did his best to lighten the load of these peasants, and he freed the household workers among them. In that year he wrote A Month in the Country, of all his stage pieces the one that has remained in the repertoire. A Provincial Lady was written in 1851. While Turgenev always claimed he had no dramatic talent (and he stopped writing plays in 1852), the lyrical tone of his plays has a close affinity to that of Chekhov's masterpieces, and his dramas are just as difficult to classify.
First Years of Fame
More of the Hunter's Sketches appeared at frequent intervals during these years. In many of them the serfs seemed nobler than their masters, and both master and serf seemed stunted by the institution of serfdom. The sketches angered the government. The stage for some action against Turgenev was set. In November 1852 he wrote a laudatory article on the recently dead author Nikolai Gogol. This article was not passed by the St. Petersburg censors; Turgenev then took it to Moscow, where it was published. Its publication was regarded as a "treasonable act"; he was arrested, and after a month in prison, he was put under house arrest at Spasskoye for almost 2 years. The greatest irony was that after his arrest the collected Hunter's Sketches were published in book form. The volume created a revulsion against serfdom much greater than the separate sketches had. During his month in prison Turgenev wrote "Mumu, " a piece called by Thomas Carlyle "the most pathetic story in the world."
In 1854 Turgenev was back in St. Petersburg. He had long felt the need to experiment with a longer form and after several false starts wrote his first novel, Rudin, in 7 months in 1855 (published 1856). It was a portrait of the talky, idealistic generation of the 1840s, and many readers felt its hero was modeled on Bakunin. Turgenev met Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Leo Tolstoy that same year; he was destined to quarrel with both. In 1856, on one of his frequent trips abroad, Turgenev met Harriet Beecher Stowe, the American novelist; the effect of Hunter's Sketches on the abolition of serfdom in Russia had often been compared to the effect of her Uncle Tom's Cabin on the abolition of slavery in the United States.
In 1857 Turgenev wrote "Assya, " and he also began work on A Nest of Gentlefolk. The following year on a trip to England, he met Benjamin Disraeli, William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Carlyle, and other authors. In 1859 Turgenev returned to Russia, where his A Nest of Gentlefolk had brought him great acclaim. In the spring of that year he dusted off a manuscript given him earlier by a young soldier, Vassily Karatayev, who had felt he would not survive the Crimean War (he had died soon afterward of typhus). The manuscript was an autobiographical tale, and it served as the core for Turgenev's next major work, On the Eve. When this novel was published in 1860, it created a stir: the old and rich attacked it, and the young and radical defended it. A two-edged review of this novel by N. A. Dobrolyubov in Nikolai Nekrasov's journal, Contemporary, caused Turgenev to break with that review and its increasingly radical orientation. The unhappiness this rupture with his old friend Nekrasov brought was compounded by a violent break with Tolstoy, who went as far as to threaten Turgenev with a duel. Turgenev declined, but the two were never truly close again.
In 1860 Turgenev also endured further unhappiness caused by a literary friend. Ivan Goncharov, who had been working on his novel The Precipice (1869) for many years, often discussing it with Turgenev, accused him of stealing ideas from it for On the Eve. An informal court was set up, with three authors acting as judges. They cleared Turgenev, but he was infuriated and was never again close to Goncharov (whose paranoia later became clinical).
Part of Turgenev's pain was eased by hard work on his new novel, which, when it appeared as Fathers and Sons (1862), marked a watershed in the literary, intellectual, and political life of Russia. This novel ranks as his masterpiece. Everyone was forced to take sides on the issue of Bazarov, the book's hero, and his nihilist philosophy. Bazarov became the archetype for the generation of the 1860s; he was a socialist in politics and a scientific materialist in philosophy. Conservatives accused Turgenev of prostrating himself before the younger generation, while radicals charged him with a cruel satire of their ideals. Some felt that Bazarov was a parody of the radical critic Dobrolyubov, who had died tragically young.
In 1863 Turgenev bought a villa in Baden-Baden, Germany, where he lived on a grand scale with the ever present Viardots. In 1866 Turgenev published Smoke, a novel that offended all Slavophiles and all conservative religious opinion in Russia. Many accused him of selling out to the West, of having lost contact with his homeland. The following year he was visited by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who attacked him as a slanderer of the motherland.
Last Phase
At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the Viardots fled to England, where Turgenev followed. A few months later he settled in France, first in Paris and then at his summer home on the Seine at Bougival near Paris. In these years he regularly attended dinners with Zola, Alphonse Daudet, and Maupassant. Flaubert was a particular favorite of Turgenev's. During these years Turgenev wrote several of his best-known short stories: "First Love" (1870), "A Lear of the Steppe" (1870), and "The Torrents of Spring" (1871).
In 1877 Turgenev published the novel on which he had labored for the past 6 years: Virgin Soil. It is his longest work and another of his generational studies. The story this time is of the young people of the 1870s. Fed up with the talk and empty idealism of their fathers, these young people have decided on action. The book was a best seller in Europe, but it was condemned by all factions in Russia. Turgenev was greatly disillusioned by the failure of this novel in Russia, and some of the pessimism thus generated crept into the short pieces he wrote in 1878 called Senilia (later entitled Poems in Prose).
A new misfortune occurred the winter of the following year. Turgenev had to go to Russia, after his wealthy older brother's death, to fight for a fair share of the inheritance. But this unpleasantness soon became a blessing. Turgenev's return to his native land, where he thought he was in disgrace and discredited, turned into a triumphal procession. He made up his old literary feuds, and he was even reconciled with his uncle, Nikolai, who, as his estate manager, had almost ruined him. Turgenev was feted day and night.
While Turgenev's life had always, since 1843, been bound up with Pauline Viardot-Garcia, their relationship was not a simple one in which he gave only unalloyed worship to the diva. The two had many fights but always reconciled, even long after Pauline had lost her voice and was more or less dependent upon Turgenev. He had other mistresses and even contemplated marriage with other women. He was a man of large and impressive physique— he was known in France as "that Russian giant"—and had a handsome face and great charm. During the tumult of his acclaim in 1879 he found time to pay court to an actress, the young and beautiful Maria Savina. In June, Turgenev received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.
In 1880 Turgenev returned to Russia for the unveiling of the Pushkin Memorial in Moscow. In the same year he wrote one of his most beautiful stories, "The Song of Triumphant Love." The following year he published most of the Poems in Prose and wrote the ghostly love story "Clara Milich." The prose poems that he felt to be too intimate were not published by his wish until 1930.
All his life Turgenev had been a hypochondriac; in 1882 real symptoms appeared. He was afflicted with cancer of the spine and died on Sept. 3, 1883. A huge ceremony was held at the Gare du Nord in Paris when his body was shipped back to Russia, and his interment in St. Petersburg was an occasion for national mourning.
Further Reading on Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev
David Magarshack, Turgenev: A Life (1954), is more compact than Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Turgenev: The Man, His Art and His Age (1926; rev. ed. 1959), which is overwritten and contains much that is sheer speculation. The memoirs of a woman raised by Turgenev's mother, full of racy anecdotes, were translated into English: Varvara Zhitova, The Turgenev Family (1947). An excellent study of Turgenev's literary development is Richard Freeborn, Turgenev: The Novelist's Novelist (1960). For background see Charles Moser's excellent scholarly study Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860s (1964); its chronological scope extends beyond its title.
Additional Biography Sources
Pritchett, V. S. (Victor Sawdon), The gentle barbarian: the life and work of Turgenev, New York: Ecco Press, 1986, 1977.
Schapiro, Leonard Bertram, Turgenev, his life and times, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982, 1978.
Troyat, Henri, Turgenev, New York: Dutton, 1988.
Waddington, Patrick, Turgenev and England, New York: New York University Press, 1981.
Yarmolinsky, Avrahm, Turgenev, the man, his art, and his age, New York: Octagon Books, 1977, 1959.
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Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev Life & Works
Ivan Sergeyevich Obolensky Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev Ivan Sergeyevich Lebedkin Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev Quotes Ivan Sergeyevich Obolensky Images Ivan Sergey...
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZeaHz_GeBc
Images:
1. Ivan S. Turgenev - Bruckmann's Portrait Collection in Munich
2. Painting of Ivan Turgenev by K. Makovsky (image from http://www.turgenev.net.ru)
3. Ivan Turgenev 'If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.'
4. Portrait of opera singer Pauline Viardot by P.Sokolov (image from bioserge.narod.ru)
Background from {[https://americanliterature.com/author/ivan-s-turgenev]}
"Ivan S. Turgenev written by William Allan Neilson
Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev's (October 28, 1818 – September 3, 1883) authored a landmark in Russian Realism when he published his first short story collection, A Sportsman's Sketches, in 1852 [alternately titled, Sketches from a Hunter's Album, and Notes of a Hunter]. His second great achievement came in 1862 with the publication of his novel Fathers and Sons.
Turgenev is featured in our favorite Russian Writers. You may also enjoy reading Henry James's endearing essay about his personable nature, titled Ivan Turgenev.
The following biographical detail is from a 1917 introductory note to that novel
Ivan Sergyevitch Turgenev came of an old stock of the Russian nobility. He was born in Orel, in the province of Orel, which lies more than a hundred miles south of Moscow, on October 28, 1818. His education was begun by tutors at home in the great family mansion in the town of Spask, and he studied later at the universities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Berlin. The influence of the last, and of the compatriots with whom he associated there, was very great; and when he returned to Moscow in 1841, he was ambitious to teach Hegel to the students there. Before this could be arranged, however, he entered the Ministry of the Interior at St. Petersburg. While there his interests turned more and more toward literature. He wrote verses and comedies, read George Sand, and made the acquaintance of Dostoevsky and the critic Bielinski. His mother, a tyrannical woman with an ungovernable temper, was eager that he should make a brilliant official career; so, when he resigned from the Ministry in 1845, she showed her disapproval by cutting down his allowance and thus forcing him to support himself by the profession he had chosen. Turgenev was an enthusiastic hunter; and it was his experiences in the woods of his native province that supplied the material for "A Sportsman's Sketches," the book that first brought him reputation. The first of these papers appeared in 1847, and in the same year he left Russia in the train of Pauline Viardot, a singer and actress, to whom he had been devoted for three or four years and with whom he maintained relations for the rest of his life. For a year or two he lived chiefly in Paris or at a country house at Courtavenel in Brie, which belonged to Madame Viardot; but in 1850 he returned to Russia. His experiences were not such as to induce him to repatriate himself permanently. He found Dostoevsky banished to Siberia and Bielinski dead; and himself under suspicion by the government on account of the popularity of "A Sportsman's Sketches." For praising Gogol, who had just died, he was arrested and imprisoned for a short time, and for the next two years kept under police surveillance. Meantime he continued to write, and by the time that the close of the Crimean War made it possible for him again to go to western Europe, he was recognized as standing at the head of living Russian authors. His mother was now dead, the estates were settled, and with an income of about $5,000 a year he became a wanderer. He had, or imagined he had, very bad health, and the eminent specialists he consulted sent him from one resort to another, to Rome, the Isle of Wight, Soden, and the like. When Madame Viardot left the stage in 1864 and took up her residence at Baden-Baden, he followed her and built there a small house for himself. They returned to France after the Franco-Prussian War, and bought a villa at Bougival, near Paris, and this was his home for the rest of his life. Here, on September 3, 1883, he died after a long delirium due to his suffering from cancer of the spinal cord. His body was taken to St. Petersburg and was buried with national honors. The two works by Turgenev contained in the present volume are characteristic in their concern with social and political questions, and in the prominence in both of them of heroes who fail in action. Turgenev preaches no doctrine in his novels, has no remedy for the universe; but he sees clearly certain weaknesses of the Russian character and exposes these with absolute candor yet without unkindness. Much as he lived abroad, his books are intensely Russian; yet of the great Russian novelists he alone rivals the masters of western Europe in the matter of form. In economy of means, condensation, felicity of language, and excellence of structure he surpasses all his countrymen; and "Fathers and Children" and "A House of Gentlefolk" represent his great and delicate art at its best."
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZeaHz_GeBc
Images:
1. Ivan S. Turgenev - Bruckmann's Portrait Collection in Munich
2. Painting of Ivan Turgenev by K. Makovsky (image from http://www.turgenev.net.ru)
3. Ivan Turgenev 'If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.'
4. Portrait of opera singer Pauline Viardot by P.Sokolov (image from bioserge.narod.ru)
Background from {[https://americanliterature.com/author/ivan-s-turgenev]}
"Ivan S. Turgenev written by William Allan Neilson
Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev's (October 28, 1818 – September 3, 1883) authored a landmark in Russian Realism when he published his first short story collection, A Sportsman's Sketches, in 1852 [alternately titled, Sketches from a Hunter's Album, and Notes of a Hunter]. His second great achievement came in 1862 with the publication of his novel Fathers and Sons.
Turgenev is featured in our favorite Russian Writers. You may also enjoy reading Henry James's endearing essay about his personable nature, titled Ivan Turgenev.
The following biographical detail is from a 1917 introductory note to that novel
Ivan Sergyevitch Turgenev came of an old stock of the Russian nobility. He was born in Orel, in the province of Orel, which lies more than a hundred miles south of Moscow, on October 28, 1818. His education was begun by tutors at home in the great family mansion in the town of Spask, and he studied later at the universities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Berlin. The influence of the last, and of the compatriots with whom he associated there, was very great; and when he returned to Moscow in 1841, he was ambitious to teach Hegel to the students there. Before this could be arranged, however, he entered the Ministry of the Interior at St. Petersburg. While there his interests turned more and more toward literature. He wrote verses and comedies, read George Sand, and made the acquaintance of Dostoevsky and the critic Bielinski. His mother, a tyrannical woman with an ungovernable temper, was eager that he should make a brilliant official career; so, when he resigned from the Ministry in 1845, she showed her disapproval by cutting down his allowance and thus forcing him to support himself by the profession he had chosen. Turgenev was an enthusiastic hunter; and it was his experiences in the woods of his native province that supplied the material for "A Sportsman's Sketches," the book that first brought him reputation. The first of these papers appeared in 1847, and in the same year he left Russia in the train of Pauline Viardot, a singer and actress, to whom he had been devoted for three or four years and with whom he maintained relations for the rest of his life. For a year or two he lived chiefly in Paris or at a country house at Courtavenel in Brie, which belonged to Madame Viardot; but in 1850 he returned to Russia. His experiences were not such as to induce him to repatriate himself permanently. He found Dostoevsky banished to Siberia and Bielinski dead; and himself under suspicion by the government on account of the popularity of "A Sportsman's Sketches." For praising Gogol, who had just died, he was arrested and imprisoned for a short time, and for the next two years kept under police surveillance. Meantime he continued to write, and by the time that the close of the Crimean War made it possible for him again to go to western Europe, he was recognized as standing at the head of living Russian authors. His mother was now dead, the estates were settled, and with an income of about $5,000 a year he became a wanderer. He had, or imagined he had, very bad health, and the eminent specialists he consulted sent him from one resort to another, to Rome, the Isle of Wight, Soden, and the like. When Madame Viardot left the stage in 1864 and took up her residence at Baden-Baden, he followed her and built there a small house for himself. They returned to France after the Franco-Prussian War, and bought a villa at Bougival, near Paris, and this was his home for the rest of his life. Here, on September 3, 1883, he died after a long delirium due to his suffering from cancer of the spinal cord. His body was taken to St. Petersburg and was buried with national honors. The two works by Turgenev contained in the present volume are characteristic in their concern with social and political questions, and in the prominence in both of them of heroes who fail in action. Turgenev preaches no doctrine in his novels, has no remedy for the universe; but he sees clearly certain weaknesses of the Russian character and exposes these with absolute candor yet without unkindness. Much as he lived abroad, his books are intensely Russian; yet of the great Russian novelists he alone rivals the masters of western Europe in the matter of form. In economy of means, condensation, felicity of language, and excellence of structure he surpasses all his countrymen; and "Fathers and Children" and "A House of Gentlefolk" represent his great and delicate art at its best."
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Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (November 9 1818 – September 3, 1883) was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a sh...
Ivan Turgenev - The Dream
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (November 9 1818 – September 3, 1883) was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short-story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction.
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born into a family of Russian land-owners in Oryol, Russia. His father, Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev, a colonel in the Russian cavalry, was a chronic philanderer. Ivan's mother, Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova, was a wealthy heiress, who had had an unhappy childhood and suffered in her marriage. Ivan's father died when Ivan was sixteen, leaving him and his brother Nicolas to be brought up by their abusive mother.
Ivan's childhood was a lonely one, in constant fear of his mother who beat him often. After the standard schooling for a son of a gentleman, Turgenev studied for one year at the University of Moscow and then moved to the University of Saint Petersburg from 1834 to 1837, focusing on Classics, Russian literature, and philology. He then studied, from 1838until 1841, at the University of Berlin to study philosophy, particularly Hegel, and history. He returned to Saint Petersburg to complete his master's examination.
Turgenev was impressed with German society and returned home believing that Russia could best improve itself by incorporating ideas from the Age of Enlightenment. Like many of his educated contemporaries, he was particularly opposed to serfdom. In 1841, Turgenev started his career in Russian civil service and spent two years working for the Ministry of Interior (1843-1845)."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBkC094autA
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Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (November 9 1818 – September 3, 1883) was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short-story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction.
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born into a family of Russian land-owners in Oryol, Russia. His father, Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev, a colonel in the Russian cavalry, was a chronic philanderer. Ivan's mother, Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova, was a wealthy heiress, who had had an unhappy childhood and suffered in her marriage. Ivan's father died when Ivan was sixteen, leaving him and his brother Nicolas to be brought up by their abusive mother.
Ivan's childhood was a lonely one, in constant fear of his mother who beat him often. After the standard schooling for a son of a gentleman, Turgenev studied for one year at the University of Moscow and then moved to the University of Saint Petersburg from 1834 to 1837, focusing on Classics, Russian literature, and philology. He then studied, from 1838until 1841, at the University of Berlin to study philosophy, particularly Hegel, and history. He returned to Saint Petersburg to complete his master's examination.
Turgenev was impressed with German society and returned home believing that Russia could best improve itself by incorporating ideas from the Age of Enlightenment. Like many of his educated contemporaries, he was particularly opposed to serfdom. In 1841, Turgenev started his career in Russian civil service and spent two years working for the Ministry of Interior (1843-1845)."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBkC094autA
FYI SGT Robert Pryor SPC Michael Oles SRTSgt David L.PFC Richard Hughes SSG (Join to see) PO2 (Join to see)TSgt George Rodriguez 1SG Walter Craig SPC Douglas Bolton SSG Donald H "Don" Bates SCPO Morris Ramsey Sgt Albert Castro Sgt Vance Bonds CPT Scott Sharon SPC Mark Huddleston GySgt Gary CordeiroSP5 Geoffrey VannersonSFC Richard Williamson CPL Dave Hoover Cpl (Join to see)
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