of a scene in ''A Sportsman's Sketches'' by Turgenev Turgenev first made his name with ''
A Sportsman's Sketches (Записки охотника
), also known as Sketches from a Hunter's Album
or Notes of a Hunter
or Memoirs of a Hunter'', a collection of short stories, based on his observations of peasant life and nature, while hunting in the forests around his mother's estate of Spasskoye. Most of the stories were published in a single volume in 1852, with others being added in later editions. The book is credited with having influenced public opinion in favour of the
abolition of serfdom in 1861. Turgenev himself considered the book to be his most important contribution to Russian literature; it is reported that
Pravda, and
Tolstoy, among others, agreed wholeheartedly, adding that Turgenev's evocations of nature in these stories were unsurpassed. One of the stories in ''A Sportsman's Sketches
, known as "Bezhin Lea" or "Byezhin Prairie", was later to become the basis for the controversial film Bezhin Meadow'' (1937), directed by
Sergei Eisenstein. In 1852, when his first major novels of Russian society were still to come, Turgenev wrote an obituary for
Nikolai Gogol, intended for publication in the
Saint Petersburg Gazette. The key passage reads: "
Gogol is dead!... What Russian heart is not shaken by those three words?... He is gone, that man whom we now have the right (the bitter right, given to us by death) to call great." The censor of
Saint Petersburg did not approve of this and banned publication, but the
Moscow censor allowed it to be published in a newspaper in that city. The censor was dismissed; but Turgenev was held responsible for the incident, imprisoned for a month, and then exiled to his country estate for nearly two years. It was during this time that Turgenev wrote his short story
Mumu ("Муму") in 1854. The story tells a tale of a deaf and mute peasant who is forced to drown the only thing in the world which brings him happiness, his dog Mumu. Like his ''
A Sportsman's Sketches (Записки охотника''), this work takes aim at the cruelties of a serf society. This work was later applauded by
John Galsworthy who claimed, "no more stirring protest against tyrannical cruelty was ever penned in terms of art." , by P. F. Sokolov, 1840s While he was still in Russia in the early 1850s, Turgenev wrote several novellas (
povesti in Russian):
The Diary of a Superfluous Man ("Дневник лишнего человека"),
Faust ("Фауст"),
The Lull ("Затишье"), expressing the anxieties and hopes of Russians of his generation. In the 1840s and early 1850s, during the rule of Tsar
Nicholas I, the political climate in Russia was stifling for many writers. This is evident in the despair and subsequent death of
Gogol, and the oppression, persecution, and arrests of artists, scientists, and writers. During this time, thousands of Russian intellectuals, members of the
intelligentsia, emigrated to Europe. Among them were
Alexander Herzen and Turgenev himself, who moved to Western Europe in 1854, although this decision probably had more to do with his fateful love for
Pauline Viardot than anything else. The following years produced the novel
Rudin ("Рудин"), the story of a man in his thirties who is unable to put his talents and idealism to any use in the Russia of
Nicholas I.
Rudin is also full of nostalgia for the idealistic student circles of the 1840s. Following the thoughts of the influential critic Vissarion Belinsky, Turgenev abandoned Romantic idealism for a more realistic style. Belinsky defended sociological realism in literature; Turgenev portrayed him in
Yakov Pasinkov (1855). During the period of 1853–62 Turgenev wrote some of his finest stories as well as the first four of his novels:
Rudin ("Рудин") (1856),
A Nest of the Gentry ("Дворянское гнездо") (1859),
On the Eve ("Накануне") (1860) and
Fathers and Sons ("Отцы и дети") (1862). Some themes involved in these works include the beauty of early love, failure to reach one's dreams, and frustrated love. Great influences on these works are derived from his love of Pauline and his experiences with his mother, who controlled over 500 serfs with the same strict demeanor in which she raised him. In 1858 Turgenev wrote the novel
A Nest of the Gentry ("Дворянское гнездо"), also full of nostalgia for the irretrievable past and of love for the Russian countryside. It contains one of his most memorable female characters, Liza, to whom Dostoyevsky paid tribute in his
Pushkin speech of 1880, alongside Tatiana and
Tolstoy's
Natasha Rostova.
Alexander II ascended the Russian throne in 1855, and the political climate became more relaxed. In 1859, inspired by reports of positive social changes, Turgenev wrote the novel
On the Eve ("Накануне") (published 1860), portraying the Bulgarian revolutionary Insarov. The following year saw the publication of one of his finest novellas,
First Love ("Первая любовь"), which was based on bitter-sweet childhood memories, and the delivery of his speech ("
Hamlet and Don Quixote", at a public reading in
Saint Petersburg) in aid of writers and scholars suffering hardship. The vision presented therein of man torn between the self-centered skepticism of
Hamlet and the idealistic generosity of
Don Quixote is one that can be said to pervade Turgenev's own works. Dostoyevsky, who had just returned from exile in
Siberia, was present at this speech, for eight years later he was to write
The Idiot, a novel whose tragic hero,
Prince Myshkin, resembles Don Quixote in many respects. Turgenev, whose knowledge of Spanish, thanks to his contact with
Pauline Viardot and her family, was good enough for him to have considered translating
Cervantes's novel into Russian, played an important role in introducing this immortal figure of world literature into the Russian context.
Fathers and Sons ("Отцы и дети"), Turgenev's most famous and enduring novel, appeared in 1862. Its leading character,
Eugene Bazarov, considered the "first
Bolshevik" in Russian literature, was in turn heralded and reviled as either a glorification or a parody of the 'new men' of the 1860s. The novel examined the conflict between the older generation, reluctant to accept reforms, and the nihilistic youth. In the central character, Bazarov, Turgenev drew a classical portrait of the mid-nineteenth-century
nihilist.
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. Hostile reaction to
Fathers and Sons ("Отцы и дети") prompted Turgenev's decision to leave Russia. As a consequence he also lost the majority of his readers. Many radical critics at the time (with the notable exception of
Dimitri Pisarev) did not take
Fathers and Sons seriously; and, after the relative critical failure of his masterpiece, Turgenev was disillusioned and started to write less. Turgenev's next novel,
Smoke ("Дым"), was published in 1867 and was again received less than enthusiastically in his native country, as well as triggering a quarrel with Dostoyevsky in Baden-Baden. His last substantial work attempting to do justice to the problems of contemporary Russian society,
Virgin Soil ("Новь"), was published in 1877. Stories of a more personal nature, such as
Torrents of Spring ("Вешние воды"),
King Lear of the Steppes ("Степной король Лир"), and
The Song of Triumphant Love ("Песнь торжествующей любви"), were also written in these autumnal years of his life. Other last works included the
Poems in Prose and "Clara Milich" ("After Death"), which appeared in the journal
European Messenger. == Legacy ==