Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born inOryol, Russia, tonoble Russian parents Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev (1793–1834), a colonel in the Russian cavalry who took part in thePatriotic War of 1812, and Varvara Petrovna Turgeneva (née Lutovinova; 1787–1850). His father belonged to an old, but impoverished Turgenev family ofTula aristocracy that traces its history to the 15th century when aTatarmirza Lev Turgen (Ivan Turgenev after his baptism) left theGolden Horde to serveVasily II of Moscow.[2][3] Ivan's mother came from a wealthy noble Lutovinov house of theOryol Governorate.[4] She spent an unhappy childhood under her tyrannical stepfather and left his house after her mother's death to live with her uncle. At age 26, she inherited a huge fortune from him.[5] In 1816, she married Turgenev.
Ivan and his brothers Nikolai and Sergei were raised by their mother, an educated, authoritarian woman. Their residence was theSpasskoye-Lutovinovo family estate that was granted to their ancestor Ivan Ivanovich Lutovinov byIvan the Terrible.[4] Varvara Turgeneva later served as an inspiration for the landlady from Turgenev'sMumu. The brothers had foreign governesses; Ivan became fluent in French, German, and English. The family members used French in everyday life, including prayers.[6] Their father spent little time with the family. Although he was not hostile toward them, his absence hurt Ivan's feelings. Their relations are described in the autobiographical novelFirst Love. When Ivan was four years old, the family journeyed through Germany and France. In 1827, the Turgenevs relocated to Moscow to enable the children to have a proper education.[5]
Turgenev was impressed with German society and returned home believing that Russia could best improve itself by incorporating ideas from theAge of Enlightenment. Like many of his educated contemporaries, he was particularly opposed toserfdom. In 1841, Turgenev started his career in the Russian civil service and spent two years working for the Ministry of Interior (1843–1845).
When Turgenev was a child, a family serf had read to him verses from theRossiad ofMikhail Kheraskov, a celebrated poet of the 18th century. Turgenev's early attempts in literature, poems, and sketches gave indications of genius and were favorably spoken of byVissarion Belinsky, then the leading Russian literary critic. During the latter part of his life, Turgenev did not reside much in Russia: he lived either atBaden-Baden orParis, often in proximity to the family of the celebrated opera singerPauline Viardot,[7] with whom he had a lifelong affair.
Turgenev never married, but he had some affairs with his family's serfs, one of which resulted in the birth of his illegitimate daughter, Paulinette. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but was timid, restrained, and soft-spoken. When Turgenev was 19, while traveling on a steamboat in Germany, the boat caught fire. According to rumours by Turgenev's enemies, he reacted in a cowardly manner. He denied such accounts, but these rumours circulated in Russia and followed him for his entire career, providing the basis for his story "A Fire at Sea".[8] His closest literary friend wasGustave Flaubert, with whom he shared similar social and aesthetic ideas. Both rejected extremist right and left political views, and carried a nonjudgmental, although rather pessimistic, view of the world. His relations withLeo Tolstoy andFyodor Dostoyevsky were often strained, as the two were, for various reasons, dismayed by Turgenev's seeming preference for Western Europe.
Unlike Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Turgenev lacked religious motives in his writings, representing the more social aspect to the reform movement. He was considered to be anagnostic.[9] Tolstoy, more than Dostoyevsky, at first anyway, rather despised Turgenev. While traveling together in Paris, Tolstoy wrote in his diary, "Turgenev is a bore." His rocky friendship with Tolstoy in 1861 wrought such animosity that Tolstoy challenged Turgenev to a duel, afterwards apologizing. The two did not speak for 17 years, but never broke family ties. Dostoyevsky parodies Turgenev in his novelThe Devils (1872) through the character of the vain novelist Karmazinov, who is anxious to ingratiate himself with the radical youth. However, in 1880,Dostoevsky's Pushkin Speech at the unveiling of theAlexander Pushkin monument brought about a reconciliation of sorts with Turgenev, who, like many in the audience, was moved to tears by his rival's eloquent tribute to the Russian spirit.
Turgenev's health declined during his later years. In January 1883, an aggressive malignant tumor (liposarcoma) was removed from hissuprapubic region, but by then the tumor hadmetastasized in his upperspinal cord, causing him intense pain during the final months of his life. On 3 September 1883, Turgenev died of a spinalabscess, a complication of the metastatic liposarcoma, in his house atBougival near Paris. His remains were taken to Russia and buried inVolkovo Cemetery in St. Petersburg.[10] On his deathbed, he pleaded withTolstoy: "My friend, return to literature!" After this, Tolstoy wrote such works asThe Death of Ivan Ilyich andThe Kreutzer Sonata.
Turgenev's brain was found to be one of the largest on record, weighing 2,012 g (4 lb 7 oz).[11]
Illustration byPyotr Sokolov of a scene inA Sportsman's Sketches by Turgenev
Turgenev first made his name withA Sportsman's Sketches (Записки охотника), also known asSketches from a Hunter's Album orNotes of a Hunter orMemoirs 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 theabolition of serfdom in 1861. Turgenev himself considered the book to be his most important contribution to Russian literature; it is reported thatPravda,[12] andTolstoy, among others, agreed wholeheartedly, adding that Turgenev's evocations of nature in these stories were unsurpassed.[13] One of the stories inA Sportsman's Sketches, known as "Bezhin Lea" or "Byezhin Prairie", was later to become the basis for the controversial filmBezhin Meadow (1937), directed bySergei Eisenstein.
In 1852, when his first major novels of Russian society were still to come, Turgenev wrote an obituary forNikolai Gogol, intended for publication in theSaint 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 ofSaint Petersburg did not approve of this and banned publication, but theMoscow 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 storyMumu ("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 hisA Sportsman's Sketches (Записки охотника), this work takes aim at the cruelties of a serf society. This work was later applauded byJohn Galsworthy who claimed, "no more stirring protest against tyrannical cruelty was ever penned in terms of art."
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 TsarNicholas I, the political climate in Russia was stifling for many writers. This is evident in the despair and subsequent death ofGogol, and the oppression, persecution, and arrests of artists, scientists, and writers. During this time, thousands of Russian intellectuals, members of theintelligentsia, emigrated to Europe. Among them wereAlexander Herzen and Turgenev himself, who moved to Western Europe in 1854, although this decision probably had more to do with his fateful love forPauline Viardot than anything else.
The following years produced the novelRudin ("Рудин"), the story of a man in his thirties who is unable to put his talents and idealism to any use in the Russia ofNicholas 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 inYakov 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) andFathers 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 novelA 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 hisPushkin speech of 1880, alongside Tatiana andTolstoy'sNatasha 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 novelOn 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 inSaint Petersburg) in aid of writers and scholars suffering hardship. The vision presented therein of man torn between the self-centered skepticism ofHamlet and the idealistic generosity ofDon Quixote is one that can be said to pervade Turgenev's own works. Dostoyevsky, who had just returned from exile inSiberia, was present at this speech, for eight years later he was to writeThe Idiot, a novel whose tragic hero,Prince Myshkin, resembles Don Quixote in many respects.[14] Turgenev, whose knowledge of Spanish, thanks to his contact withPauline Viardot and her family, was good enough for him to have considered translatingCervantes's novel into Russian, played an important role in introducing this immortal figure of world literature into the Russian context.
Ivan Turgenev, 1880
Fathers and Sons ("Отцы и дети"), Turgenev's most famous and enduring novel, appeared in 1862. Its leading character,Eugene Bazarov, considered the "firstBolshevik" 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-centurynihilist.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 toFathers 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 ofDimitri Pisarev) did not takeFathers 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 asTorrents of Spring ("Вешние воды"),King Lear of the Steppes ("Степной король Лир"), andThe Song of Triumphant Love ("Песнь торжествующей любви"), were also written in these autumnal years of his life. Other last works included thePoems in Prose and "Clara Milich" ("After Death"), which appeared in the journalEuropean Messenger.[7]
"The conscious use of art for ends extraneous to itself was detestable to him... He knew that the Russian reader wanted to be told what to believe and how to live, expected to be provided with clearly contrasted values, clearly distinguishable heroes and villains.... Turgenev remained cautious and skeptical; the reader is left in suspense, in a state of doubt: problems are raised, and for the most part left unanswered" –Isaiah Berlin, Lecture on Fathers and Children[15]
Turgenev wrote on themes similar to those found in the works ofTolstoy andDostoyevsky, but he did not approve of the religious and moral preoccupations that his two great contemporaries brought to their artistic creation. Turgenev was closer in temperament to his friendsGustave Flaubert andTheodor Storm, the North German poet and master of thenovella form, who also often dwelt on memories of the past and evoked the beauty of nature.[16]
Turgenev late in his career.1993 Russian 1 rouble coin commemorating the 175th anniversary of Turgenev's birth
Turgenev's artistic purity made him a favorite of like-minded novelists of the next generation, such asHenry James andJoseph Conrad, both of whom greatly preferred Turgenev to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. James, who wrote no fewer than five critical essays on Turgenev's work, claimed that "his merit of form is of the first order" (1873) and praised his "exquisite delicacy", which "makes too many of his rivals appear to hold us, in comparison, by violent means, and introduce us, in comparison, to vulgar things" (1896).[17]Vladimir Nabokov, notorious for his casual dismissal of many great writers, praised Turgenev's "plastic musical flowing prose", but criticized his "labored epilogues" and "banal handling of plots". Nabokov stated that Turgenev "is not a great writer, though a pleasant one", and ranked him fourth among nineteenth-century Russian prose writers, behind Tolstoy, Gogol, andAnton Chekhov, but ahead of Dostoyevsky.[18] His idealistic ideas about love, specifically the devotion a wife should show her husband, were cynically referred to by characters in Chekhov's "An Anonymous Story".Isaiah Berlin acclaimed Turgenev's commitment to humanism, pluralism, and gradual reform over violent revolution as representing the best aspects ofRussian liberalism.[19]
^Bloom, Harold, ed. (2003).Ivan Turgenev. Chelsea House Publishers. pp. 95–96.ISBN9780791073995.For example, Leonard Schapiro, Turgenev, His Life and Times (New York: Random, 1978) 214, writes about Turgenev's agnosticism as follows: 'Turgenev was not a determined atheist; there is ample evidence which shows that he was an agnostic who would have been happy to embrace the consolations of religion, but was, except perhaps on some rare occasions, unable to do so'; and Edgar Lehrman,Turgenev's Letters (New York: Knopf, 1961) xi, presents still another interpretation for Turgenev's lack of religion, suggesting literature as a possible substitution: 'Sometimes Turgenev's attitude toward literature makes us wonder whether, for him, literature was not a surrogate religion—something in which he could believe unhesitatingly, unreservedly, and enthusiastically, something that somehow would make man in general and Turgenev in particular a little happier.'
^Spitzka, EA. "A study of the brains of six eminent scientists and scholars belonging to the American Anthropometric Society. Together with a description of the skull of Professor E D Cope".Trans Am Philos Soc.1907 (21):175–308.
^Tolstoy said after Turgenev's death: "His stories of peasant life will forever remain a valuable contribution to Russian literature. I have always valued them highly. And in this respect none of us can stand comparison with him. Take, for example,Living Relic (Живые мощи),Loner (Бирюк), and so on. All these are unique stories. And as for his nature descriptions, these are true pearls, beyond the reach of any other writer!" Quoted by K.N. Lomunov, "Turgenev i Lev Tolstoi: Tvorcheskie vzaimootnosheniia", in S.E. Shatalov (ed.),I.S. Turgenev v sovremennom mire (Moscow: Nauka, 1987).
^See the "Influences" section in the Infobox of the article on Dostoyevsky for a reference to a study dealing with precisely this issue.
^Isaiah Berlin,Russian Thinkers (Penguin, 1994), pp. 264–305.
^See Karl Ernst Laage,Theodor Storm. Biographie (Heide: Boyens, 1999).
^See Henry James,European Writers & The Prefaces (The Library of America: New York, 1984).
^See Vladimir Nabokov,Lectures on Russian Literature (HBJ, San Diego: 1981).
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