Ivan (Sergeyevich) Turgenev - Life, Career, Bibliography

Novelist, born in Orel, W Russia. He studied at St Petersburg and Berlin universities, and joined the Russian civil service in 1841, but in 1843 abandoned this to take up literature. His first studies of peasant life, Sportsman's Sketches (1852, trans title), made his reputation, but earned governmental ill favour. He was banished for two years to his country estates, and then lived mainly in Germany and France. His greatest novel, Fathers and Sons (1862, trans title), was badly received in Russia, but a particular success in England. He also wrote poetry, plays (of which A Month in the Country (1855) is the best known), short stories, and tales of the supernatural.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (Russian: Ива́н Серге́евич Турге́нев) (November 9, 1818 [O.S.

Life

Turgenev was born into a landed and wealthy family in Oryol, Russia, on October 28, 1818. His father Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev, a colonel in the Imperial Russian cavalry, died when he was sixteen, leaving Turgenev and his brother Nicholas to be brought up by their abusive mother, Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova. After the standard schooling for a child of a gentleman's family, Turgenev studied for one year at the University of Moscow and then moved to the University of St Petersburg, focusing on the classics, Russian literature and philology. Turgenev was impressed with German Central-European society, and returned home a "Westernizer", as opposed to a "Slavophile", believing that Russia could best improve itself by imitating the West.

A family serf read to him verses from the Rossiad of Kheraskov, a celebrated poet of the eighteenth century. Turgenev's early attempts in literature, poems, and sketches had indications of genius and were favorably spoken of by Belinsky, then the leading Russian literary critic.

Turgenev never married, although he had a daughter with one of his family's serfs. His relations with Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky were often strained, as the two were slavophiles, opposing Turgenev in this respect. His rocky friendship with Tolstoy in 1861 wrought such animosity that Tolstoy challenged Turgenev to a duel, afterwards apologizing. Dostoevsky would parody Turgenev in his 1872 novel, Demons, through the character of the novelist, Karamazinov.

Turgenev's brain was weighed in 1883 at an incredible 2021 grams.

Career

Turgenev firsy made his name with A Sportsman's Sketches (Записки охотника), also known as Sketches From a Hunter's Album or Notes of a Hunter. In 1852, between Turgenev's Sketches and his first important novels, he wrote his (now notorious) obituary to his idol Gogol in the Saint Petersburg Gazette. The censor of St. Petersburg did not approve of this idolatry and banned its publication, but Turgenev managed to fool the Moscow censor into printing it.

His next work was A Nest of Nobles (Дворянское гнездо)in 1859, and was followed the next year by On the Eve (Накануне), a tale which contains one of his most memorabe (and beautiful) female characters, Helen. The stinging criticism, especially from younger radicals, disappointed Turgenev and he wrote very little in the years following Fathers and Sons.

Turgenev's stilted later novels are considered inferior to his earlier efforts. Turgenev has often been compared to his Russian contemporaries, Leo Tolstoy and Feodor Dostoevsky, who wrote around the same time and on similiar issues.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Bibliography

Novels

1857 - Рудин (Rudin) 1859 - Дворянское Гнездо (Dvoryanskoye Gnezdo or Home of the Gentry, A Nest of Gentlefolk, or A Nest of Nobles) 1860 - Накануне (Nakanune or On the Eve) 1862 - Отцы и Дети (Ottsy i Deti or Fathers and Sons) 1867 - Дым (Dym or Smoke) 1877 - Новь (Virgin Soil)

Short Stories

1850 - Дневник Лишнего Человека (Dnevnik Lishnego Cheloveka or The Diary of a Superfluous Man) 1851 - Провинциалка (Provintsialka or The Provincial Lady) 1852 - Записки Охотника (Zapiski Okhotnika or The Hunter's Sketches) 1855 - Yakov Pasynkov 1856 - Faust: A Story in Nine Letters 1858 - Aся (Asia ) 1860 - Первая Любовь (Pervaia Liubov' or First Love) 1870 - Stepnoy Korol' Lir (A Lear of the Steppes) 1872 - Вешние Воды (Veshinye Vody or Torrents of Spring or Spring Torrents) 1881 - Песнь Торжествующей Любви (The Song of the Triumphant Love) 1882 - Klara Milich (The Mysterious Tales)

Plays

1849/1856 - Zavtrak u Predvoditelia 1850/1851 - Razgovor na Bol'shoi Doroge (A Conversation on the Highway) 1846/1852 - Bezdenezh'e (The Poor Gentleman) 1857/1862 - Nakhlebnik (The Family Charge) 1855/1872 - Mesiats v Derevne (A Month in the Country) 1882 - Vecher V Sorrente (An Evening in Sorrento)