Turgenev’s shy hero, Tchulkaturin, is a representative example of a Russian archetype – the “superfluous man”, a sort of Hamlet not necessarily dignified with the title Prince: an individual of comfortable means leading a dreary existence, without purpose and led on by events which may, as in this story, engulf him. The novella takes the form of a diary started by Tchulkaturin in the shock of being diagnosed as having a terminal illness. The journal entries cover a period of two weeks, leading to his death. Tchulkaturin quickly homes in on the only significant event in his life – an unreciprocated falling-in-love leading haphazardly to a non-fatal duel that leaves him desolated and ful...

Rudin is the first and perhaps least known novel by Ivan Turgenev, a famous Russian writer best known for his short stories and the novel Fathers and Sons. The story focuses on a romantic involvement between Rudin and Natalya, a serious, intelligent young woman. The topic of the “superfluous man” and his inability to act, which was a major theme of Turgenev's literary work, is explored. – Adapted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudin by Lee Smalley

On the Eve appeared in 1860, two years before Fathers and Sons, Turgenev's most famous novel. It is set in the prior decade (by the end of the novel, the Crimean War (1853-56) has already broken out. It centers on the young Elena Nikolaevna Stakhov, daughter of Nikolai Arteyemvitch and Anna Vassilyevna Stahov. Misunderstood by both her parents (Nikolai Artemyevitch is at least as interested in his German mistress as in members of her family) she is on friendly terms with both the would-be professor Andrei Petrovitch Bersenyev and the rising young sculptor Pavel Yakovitch Shubin, both of whom might be -- or might not be -- in love with her. The appearance of Dmitri Nikanorovitch Insarov, a...

The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the character Yevgeny Bazarov has been referred to as the “first Bolshevik”, for his nihilism and rejection of the old order.

Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons as a response to the growing cultural schism that he saw between liberals of the 1830s/1840s and the growing nihilist movement. Both the nihilists (the “sons”) and the 1830s liberals sought Western-based social change in Russia. Additionally, these two modes of thought were contrasted with the conservative Slavophiles, who believed that Russia’s path lay in its traditional spirituality.

Fathers and Sons might...

The title of the novella is almost an adequate summary in itself. The “boy-meets-girl-then-loses-her” story is universal but not, I think, banal – despite a surprise ending which notoriously turns out to be very little of a surprise. “First Love” is given its originality and poignancy by Turgenev’s mastery of the piercing turning-point (akin to Joyce’s “epiphanies”) that transforms the character’s whole being, making a tragic outcome inevitable. Even the nature symbolism is rescued from triteness by lovely poetic similes – e.g. “but at that point my attention was arrested by the appearance of a speckled woodpecker who busily climbed up the slender stem of a birch-tree and peeped out un...

To tell the truth, this story — “A trip to Polesye” — is not so much complicated with philosophical or psychological ideas. In this story author had another goal — to describe the beauty of places where he was born, the beauty of nature. The only thing which hero’s doing is the travel on horses across the small villages in the heart of Russia. You can also appreciate the artistic, colorful and talanted description of all that nature if you will read/listen to this small story.