Other Literary Forms
Ivan Turgenev achieved literary renown predominantly through his novels and short stories, although he also produced accomplished works in the genres of poetry and drama. His first literary success came with the publication of the long poem Parasha (1843). Turgenev’s next resounding success came nearly a decade later with the publication of Zapiski okhotnika (1852; Russian Life in the Interior, 1855; better known as A Sportsman’s Sketches, 1932), a collection of short stories depicting life in nineteenth century rural Russia. A Sportsman’s Sketches met with widespread acclaim both for its objective, realistic portrayal of rural characters and for its role in arousing the indignation of the Russian intelligentsia over the mistreatment of serfs by the Russian nobility. It is probable that this book had a significant effect on Czar Alexander II, who liberated the serfs in 1861.
In his novels, Turgenev continued to portray realistically the men and women who characterized his society. He explored the concerns of the Russian intelligentsia by addressing specific problems, usually through a love story. His most famous novel is also the one which aroused the most controversy: Ottsy i deti (1862; Fathers and Sons, 1867) angered both conservatives and radicals in its depiction of the conflict between the older, reactionary generation and the younger, revolutionary generation. The “nihilist” hero, Evgeni Bazarov, pleased partisans of neither side, and this work signaled Turgenev’s demise as a major contributing force in the Russian literature of his age.
In addition to his poetry, drama, and fiction, Turgenev was the author of essays, articles, autobiographical works, and opera librettos.
Achievements
Ivan Turgenev’s place among the luminaries of Russian literature is ensured by both his artistic and his historical importance. The outstanding characteristics of Turgenev’s canon are his highly crafted style, his psychological characterization, and his ability to articulate the concerns of his age. The aesthetics of his early efforts in poetry carried over into his prose in its lyric grace and spare, lucid style. In the manner of Jane Austen or Henry James, Turgenev held up a mirror to his society by creating probing psychological portraits of representative members of that society. So accurate were his portraits that the terms he used to describe them passed into the common currency of Russian literature. The “superfluous man” embodied in the protagonist of his first novel, Rudin (1856; English translation, 1873), was recognized by Turgenev’s audience as a type that abounded not only on the pages of Turgenev’s drama and fiction but also on the pages of much nineteenth century Russian literature, and the “nihilist” hero of Fathers and Sons embodied an entire generation determined to tear down the foundations of Russian society rather than slowly to reform it.
The plots of Turgenev’s novels and plays are love stories, but underlying his work throughout his literary career was his concern for the destiny of his country. Just as that concern influenced his writing, so his writing influenced the intellectual thought of Russia. Turgenev believed that Russia’s future lay in assimilating the best of Western European culture through intelligent, liberal reform. By portraying the members of the Russian intelligentsia with an ironic detachment that revealed the frequently ineffectual nature of their liberalism and by portraying the peasantry as fully rounded characters, often superior to their masters in compassion and understanding, Turgenev did much to spur Russian society to address the problems of its oppressive feudal system.
When, in the late 1850’s, political differences were polarizing Russian society, dividing it into revolutionaries and reactionaries, Turgenev again turned his ironic observation on representative members of society in the characterizations of the reactionary landowner and the nihilist hero in...
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his novelFathers and Sons. The anger with which this novel was met by revolutionaries and reactionaries alike attests the accuracy of Turgenev’s depiction. In a nation that was already on the road to revolution, Turgenev’s moderation and objectivity were no longer appreciated.
Turgenev’s lyricism and clarity of style, the universality of his love stories and characterizations, and the social importance of his themes ensure him a place in the annals of Russian literature. Yet he is also noteworthy as a pivotal figure in the transition from early nineteenth century Romanticism to late nineteenth century realism. Turgenev’s early verse and drama were written during the heyday of Romanticism: His early protagonists are Byronic heroes. His early heroines are idealized, and his early plots are sentimental. Although Turgenev continued to employ love stories—usually centering on romantic triangles—in his later dramas and in his novels, the passionate, sentimental heroes and heroines gave way to the strong-willed women and superfluous men who more closely matched Turgenev’s realistic view of society. By evolving from a Romantic subject and style to a realistic subject and style, Turgenev’s drama and fiction provided both continuity for the Russian literary tradition and an early model for the realistic plays and novels that would follow.
Although Turgenev’s accomplishments as a novelist and a writer of short stories were appreciated in his lifetime—he was one of the first Russian novelists of the nineteenth century to achieve international renown—his accomplishments as a dramatist were not widely appreciated until the turn of the century, when the innovative elements of his dramaturgy were recognized as presaging the psychological realism of Anton Chekhov’s plays, which also depicted life in rural Russia and the relationships among members of the upper and lower classes. Yet, apart from his significance as a major novelist and as a transitional figure in nineteenth century Russian literature, Turgenev would be remembered as a dramatist in any case, on the strength of one play, A Month in the Country. This play was a unique contribution to Russian theater and was one of the outstanding Russian plays to be written during the mid-nineteenth century.
Other Literary Forms
In addition to A Sportsman’s Sketches, Ivan Turgenev published several other short stories and novellas individually. His main contribution, however, was six novels, some of which are among the best written in Russian, especially Ottsy i deti (1862; Fathers and Sons, 1867). He also wrote poems, poems in prose, and plays, one of which, Mesyats v derevne (1855; A Month in the Country, 1924), is still staged regularly in Russian theaters.
Achievements
Ivan Turgenev’s opus is not particularly large, yet with about four dozen stories and novellas and his brief novels, he became one of the best writers not only in Russian but also in world literature. Turgenev was a leading force in the Russian realistic movement of the second half of the nineteenth century. Together with Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevski, Leo Tolstoy, and Anton Chekhov, he built the reputation that Russian literature enjoys in the world. Perhaps more than other writers, he was responsible for acquainting foreign readers with Russian literature, and because he spent most of his adult life abroad, he was an esteemed figure in the international literary life.
Turgenev was also instrumental in arousing the sensitivity and consciousness of his compatriots, because he dealt with such burning social issues as the plight of Russian peasantry, in A Sportsman’s Sketches; the “superfluous man” in Russian society, in “The Diary of a Superfluous Man”; the fixation of Russians with revolution, in Rudin (1856; English translation, 1947); the decaying nobility in Dvoryanskoye gnezdo (1859; Liza, 1869; better known as A House of Gentlefolk, 1894); and the age-old conflict between generations, in Fathers and Sons.
Turgenev also excelled in his style, especially in the use of the language. Albert Jay Nock called him “incomparably the greatest of artists in fiction,” and Virginia Woolf termed his works as being “curiously of our own time, undecayed and complete in themselves.” His reputation, despite some fluctuations, endures.
Other literary forms
The literary reputation of Ivan Turgenev (tewr-GYAYN-yuhf) rests primarily on his narrative prose works, which, aside from his novels, include novelettes, novellas, and short stories, the latter a genre in which he excelled and became prolific. In 1847, he began putting together a collection of stories that was published in 1852 bearing the title Zapiski okhotnika (Russian Life in the Interior, 1855; better known as A Sportsman’s Sketches, 1932), highly admired by Leo Tolstoy, which includes many of Turgenev’s well-known pieces. Turgenev’s naturalism was well adapted to the portrayal of the life of poor countryfolk—enough to evoke compassion while inciting indignation at their lot.
Turgenev tried his hand at drama, too, achieving reasonable success with Gde tonko, tam i rvyotsya (pr. 1912; Where It Is Thin, There It Breaks, 1924), Kholostyak (pr. 1849; The Bachelor, 1924), Provintsialka (pr. 1851; A Provincial Lady, 1934), and especially Mesyats v derevne (pb. 1855; A Month in the Country, 1924), a play whose innovations in many ways adumbrate those of Anton Chekhov.
Turgenev began writing poetry as a student and had some verses published in 1838. Toward the end of his life, he assembled a collection of his poetic works titled Senilia (1882, 1930; better known as Stikhotvoreniya v proze; Poems in Prose, 1883, 1945). The total profile of Turgenev’s literary activities encompasses other forms as well, including opera libretti, essays, articles, autobiographical pieces and memoirs, and even a semiscientific study on nightingales.
Achievements
In the world of letters, Ivan Turgenev stands out as a naturalist, although not in the hammering manner of Émile Zola, the depressing manner of Thomas Hardy, or the milder, veristic manner of Giovanni Verga. Even if the words “idealization” and “sentimentality” are often used in connection with Turgenev, his “Nature school” tonality has neither the idealizing tendency of Sergei Aksakov nor the sentimental tendency of Dmitrii Vasil’evich Grigorovich, both of whom were his compatriots and contemporaries. On the surface, these qualities are there; when one digs further, they are not. If, on one hand, the reader luxuriates in Turgenev’s intensely felt descriptions of nature, he or she is, on the other hand, struck by Turgenev’s devastating irony (especially as applied to the upper classes) and by the uncompromising realism of his portrayals (of all classes, including the peasantry). Turgenev’s worldview—more exactly, the view of his Russia, whose social history his novels chronicle for two decades—is not optimistic. His most famous hero, the controversial Bazarov in Fathers and Sons, is a nihilist; otherwise, his “heroes” are nonheroes, that is, “superfluous men.” His heroines appear affirmative only in the perhaps important but not exhilarating sense of loyalty and self-sacrifice. Turgenev’s sentimental hue coats a tragic substance, and his instinctive idealism is pared by a naturalistic objectivity.
One reason for the initial positive flavor is the constant appearance of the love motif and the delicate treatment of that special aspect of it, its awakening. Another is the sensual way in which nature fits Turgenev’s creative scheme, particularly landscapes, which may or may not shape a background to events but reflect, along with his compassion for the serfs, what may well be the author’s most genuine inspiration of all. Finally, there is the softening effect produced by a manicured style; a sense of language and its need for immediate communication at the proper level; the use of several adjectives to enhance descriptiveness, individualizing it through incorrectness or strange words or French phrases; and the author’s care not to allow an idea to become so involved that it mars the basic tenet: clarity (Turgenev liked the short sentence as much as he disliked the metaphor). He was a craftsman.
Turgenev profited from his many and admired Western friends and writers, Alphonse Daudet, George Sand, Gustave Flaubert, Prosper Mérimée, and Henry James among them. Despite his preoccupation with things Russian, he is the most “Western” of Russian authors and among the most tempered, the least given to extremes, even when he presents the peasants as far more human than their masters. To speak of his friends’ influence, however, would be to stretch the point, for, in his homeland, there were also Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Tolstoy, Aleksandr Herzen, and Fyodor Dostoevski (who hated Turgenev, as shown by the character Karmazinof in Dostoevski’s Besy, 1871-1872; The Possessed, 1913)—to mention but a few Russian writers. Turgenev unquestionably felt an aesthetic and cultural affinity with the West, and he surely believed in the Europeanization of Russia, but he was his own artist, and he wrote his own way as a creator who could see and say more through his personal optic than through varied imitation.
Turgenev’s irony notwithstanding, moderation shaped this optic, a moderation that could come down hard on both sides of an issue (why else were both conservatives and radicals outraged at the portrayal of Bazarov?). It was a moderation that implied that, whatever the desirability of Romantic idealism and the rationality of what is reasonable, there are no answers to life’s problems. The important thing is to maintain a balanced, liberal altruism. In his speech titled “Gamlet i Don Kikhot” (1860; “Hamlet and Don Quixote,” 1930), Turgenev showed that Don Quixote’s accomplishments are secondary to the way he feels about people, to his sense of ideal and of sacrifice, his ability to act on indignation, although his fantasy makes him appear a madman. Hamlet, on the other hand, is the total egocentric, doubting, hesitating, and calculating, more concerned with his situation than with his duty. Only the Fates “can show us whether we struggled against visions, or against real enemies.” The Knight of the Woeful Countenance made more of an impact on society than did the Prince of Denmark. Turgenev tended to emphasize the social over the human side of things, though one must be cautious in accepting this observation without qualification.
Discussion Topics
Where did Ivan Turgenev stand in the struggle of Russian intellectuals between Slavophiles and Westerners?
What influences on Turgenev’s life led him to his concern for Russian serfs?
How did Turgenev contribute to the understanding and betterment of serfs?
Does Bazarov in Fathers and Sons foretell the materialism that would infect Russian society in the following century?
Did Russian critics’ difficulty in judging Bazarov arise from a weakness in Turgenev’s characterization or from concerns that they brought to the novel?
Bibliography
Allen, Elizabeth Cheresh. Beyond Realism: Turgenev’s Poetics of Secular Salvation. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992. Argues that readers should not turn to Turgenev merely for transparent narratives of nineteenth century Russian life; attempts to expose the unique imaginative vision and literary patterns in Turgenev’s work. Discusses Turgenev’s development of narrative techniques in A Sportsman’s Sketches, analyzing several of the major stories, such as “Bezhin Meadow” and “The Singers.”
Brodianski, Nina. “Turgenev’s Short Stories: A Reevaluation.” Slavonic and East European Review 32, no. 78 (1953): 70-91. In this brief but thorough and stimulating study, Brodianski examines Turgenev’s short stories in general, their themes, structure, and psychological illumination of characters, as well as his philosophy (as much as there is of it) and his literary theories about the short story. Inasmuch as it re-evaluates some long-standing opinions about Turgenev, it serves a good purpose.
Brouwer, Sander. Character in the Short Prose of Ivan Sergeevic Turgenev. Atlanta: Rodopi, 1996. An excellent look at Turgenev’s characters in the short fiction.
Costlow, Jane T. Worlds Within Worlds: The Novels of Ivan Turgenev. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. A useful discussion of Turgenev’s long fiction. Includes bibliographical references and an index.
Gregg, Richard. “Turgenev and Hawthorne: The Life-Giving Satyr and the Fallen Faun.” Slavic and East European Journal 41 (Summer, 1997): 258-270. Discusses Nathaniel Hawthorne’s influence on Turgenev and comments on the common motif that their “mysterious” stories shared (the uncanny spell, curse, or blight). Claims that Turgenev’s explicit admiration for those works of Hawthorne in which that motif is to be found attests to a bond of sympathy between the two writers.
Kagan-Kans, Eva. “Fate and Fantasy: A Study of Turgenev’s Fantastic Stories.” Slavic Review 18 (1969): 543-560. Kagan-Kans traces Turgenev’s treatment of fantasy and supernatural elements in his stories, as well as the role of fate and dreams. She also examines Turgenev’s relationship with other writers, especially the Romanticists, and their influence on him as evidenced in individual stories, especially those dealing with fantasy and the supernatural.
Knowles, A. V. Ivan Turgenev. Boston: Twayne, 1988. An excellent introductory study, with a biographical sketch, chapters on the start of Turgenev’s literary career, the establishment of his reputation and his first three novels. Subsequent chapters on his later novels, letters, final years, and his place in literature. Includes chronology, notes, and an annotated bibliography.
Lloyd, John Arthur Thomas. Ivan Turgenev. 1942. Reprint. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1973. A practical, compact biography, tastefully illustrated, treating systematically Turgenev’s life and works in a lively, succinct manner. It tends to cling to traditional views about Turgenev, which is useful for comparative purposes.
Lowe, David A., ed. Critical Essays on Ivan Turgenev. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989. A collection of essays on Turgenev’s literary works. Bibliography and index.
Magarshack, David. Turgenev: A Life. London: Faber and Faber, 1954. An illustrated biography by Turgenev’s translator, describing extensively his life. Concentrates on the events that shaped the author’s life, his relationships with Russian and foreign writers, and the factual circumstances surrounding his works. A useful introduction to Turgenev and his opus.
Pritchett, V. S. The Gentle Barbarian: The Life and Work of Turgenev. New York: Random House, 1977. This popular study is quite accessible to the general reader, but it is largely based on the previous biographies of Magarshack and Yarmolinsky. Although little is new here, it is characterized by Pritchett’s lucid style and his critical understanding of Turgenev’s fiction. Pritchett’s approach is to use details from Turgenev’s life to increase the reader’s understanding of his novels and short stories.
Seeley, Frank Friedeberg. Turgenev: A Reading of His Fiction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Seeley prefaces his thorough study of Turgenev’s fiction with an outline of Turgenev’s life and a survey of his poetry and plays. This volume incorporates later findings and challenges some established views, especially the traditional notion of the “simplicity” of Turgenev’s works. Seeley stresses the psychological treatment that Turgenev allotted to his characters.
Sheidley, William E. “’Born in Imitation of Someone Else’: Reading Turgenev’s ‘Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District’ as a Version of Hamlet.” Studies in Short Fiction 27 (Summer, 1990): 391-398. Discusses the character Vasily Vasilyevych as the most emphatic and the most pathetic of the Hamlet types in A Sportsman’s Sketches. Contends that in a striking flash of metafictional irony, Vasily recognizes himself as the walking embodiment of the Hamlet stereotype. Sheidley points out the different implications of the Hamlet character in Elizabethan tragedy and nineteenth century character sketch.
Valentino, Russell Scott. Vicissitudes of Genre in the Russian Novel: Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons,” Chernyshevsky’s “What Is to Be Done?,” Dostoevsky’s “Demons,” Gorky’s “Mother.” New York: Peter Lang, 2001. This study compares Turgenev’s use of characterization and gender with that of other Russian novelists.
Waddington, Patrick, ed. Ivan Turgenev and Britain. Providence, R.I.: Berg, 1995. Essays on Turgenev’s reputation in England and in America, including reviews by distinguished critics such as Frank Harris, Virginia Woolf, and Edmund Gosse. Waddington provides a comprehensive introduction, explaining the historical context in which these reviews appeared. With extensive notes and bibliography.
Woodward, James B. Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons.” London: Bristol Classical Press, 1996. Part of the Critical Studies in Russian Literature series, this is an excellent study of the novel. Provides bibliographical references and an index.
Yarmolinsky, Avrahm. Turgenev: The Man, His Art, and His Age. New York: Orion Press, 1959. Reprint. New York: Collier, 1962. Another reliable shorter biography, useful as an introduction to Turgenev. As the title implies, it touches on all important stages in his life and discusses his works as to their geneses, their salient features, and their overall significance for Turgenev and for Russian and world literature. Concludes with a useful chronology and a good bibliography.
