Ivan Turgenev

This book is a biography of Ivan Turgenev. The author details the life and work of Ivan Turgenev. In this book, Henry James notes that “When the mortal remains of Ivan Turgenev were about to be transported from Paris for interment in his own country, a short commemorative service was held at the Gare du Nord. Ernest Renan and Edmond About, standing beside the train in which his coffin had been placed, bade farewell in the name of the French people to the illustrious stranger who for so many years had been their honoured and grateful guest. M. Renan made a beautiful speech, and M. About a very clever one, and each of them characterised, with ingenuity, genius, and the moral nature of the most touching of writers, the most lovable of men. “Turgenev,” said M. Renan, “received by the mysterious decree which marks out human vocations the gift which is noble beyond all others: he was born essentially impersonal.” Ivan Turgenev, (born Nov. 9, 1818, Oryol, Russia—died Sept. 3, 1883, Bougival, near Paris, France), Russian novelist, poet, and playwright. His years at the University of Berlin convinced him of the West's superiority and the need for Russia to Westernize. He lived in Europe after c. 1862. He is known for realistic, affectionate portrayals of the Russian peasantry and for penetrating studies of the Russian intelligentsia who were attempting to move the country into a new age. His most famous early work is “The Diary of a Superfluous Man” (1850), which supplied the epithet “superfluous man” for the weak-willed intellectual protagonist common in 19th-century Russian literature. He gained fame with the short-story cycle A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), which criticizes serfdom. His dramatic masterpiece, A Month in the Country (1855), and the novel Rudin (1856) followed. His interest in change and intergenerational differences is reflected in the controversial Fathers and Sons (1862), his greatest novel. Turgenev's work is distinguished from that of his contemporaries by its sophisticated lack of hyperbole, its balance, and its concern for artistic values. His greatest work was always topical, committed literature, having universal appeal in the elegance of the love story and the psychological acuity of the portraiture.