Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
In this, too, the want of dispassionateness in his nature revealed itself. Personal relations prevented him from being objective. In 1867, apropos of Turgenieff's "Smoke," which had just appeared, he wrote to Fet: There is hardly any love of anything in "Smoke" and hardly any poetry.
You are too penetrating not to know that if either of us has cause to envy the other, it is certainly not you that has cause to envy me. The following year he wrote a letter to my father which, it seems to me, is a key to the understanding of Turgenieff's attitude toward him: You write that you are very glad you did not follow my advice and become a pure man of letters.
People get attached to some nonsensical expression, and go on repeating it in season and out of season." I have given extracts above from Turgenieff's letters, which show the invariable consistency with which he lauded my father's literary talents. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same of my father's attitude toward Turgenieff.
For instance, in 1860, he wrote a long dissertation on Turgenieff's novel "On the Eve," which had just come out, and at the end added a postscript: "What is the price of a set of the best quality of veterinary instruments? And what is the price of a set of lancets and bleeding-cups for human use?"
Everyone roared with laughter, Turgenieff more than anybody. After tea the "grown-ups" started some conversation, and a warm dispute arose among them. It was Prince Urusof who disputed most warmly, and "went for" Turgenieff. Of Turgenieff's third visit I remember the woodcock shooting. This was on the second or third of May, 1880.
Turgenieff's Fathers and Sons is recalled more than once, especially the character of Bazarov, the nihilist. Furthermore, when this student fails to reap the benefit of a good girl's love, Sanine steps in and ruins her. Even incest is hinted at.
If one reads Turgénieff's stories with the knowledge that they were composed or rather that they came into being in this way, one can trace the process in every line. Story, in the conventional sense of the word a fable constructed, like Wordsworth's phantom, 'to startle and waylay' there is as little as possible.
Turgenieff understood Tolstoy; so did Dostoïevsky, and so does latterly the novelist Dmitri Merejkowski. Turgenieff's appeal to Tolstoy is become historic, and all the more pathetic because written on the eve of his death. Dear and beloved Leo Nikolaievitch: I have not written to you for a long time, for I lie on my deathbed. I cannot get well; that is not to be thought of.
As we rode across the Turgenieff's park, he recalled in passing how of old he and Ivan Sergeyevitch had disputed which park was best, Spasskoye or Yasnaya Polyana. I asked him: "And now which do you think?" "Yasnaya Polyana IS the best, though this is very fine, very fine indeed." In the village we visited the head-man's and two or three other cottages, and came away disappointed.
The Nihilist of Turgenieff's day had been a hedonist of the clubs, or a harmless weaver of scientific Utopias; the Nihilist of the new age was that most dangerous of men, a desperado girt with a fighting creed.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking