Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev , 1818-83, Russian novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer, considered one of the foremost Russian writers. He came from a landowning family in Orel province, and his cruel, domineering mother was a great influence on his life. Turgenev studied in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Berlin, and he became an enthusiastic advocate of the Westernization of Russia. His early writings were published in Nekrasov's journal The Contemporary. He won his first success in 1847 with "Khor and Kalinich," a sympathetic story of peasant life, which was published later, with similar stories, in A Sportsman's Sketches (1852). In this book he attacked serfdom, and it is thought that this work helped induce Alexander II to emancipate the serfs. Turgenev's most fruitful period was the decade 1850-60, the latter half of which he spent in Western Europe. In his novels of this period, which include Rudin (1855), A Nest of Gentlefolk (1859), and On the Eve (1860), Turgenev is concerned with Russian social and political issues. His masterpiece, Fathers and Sons (1862), deals with nihilist philosophy and personal and social rebellion. The novel was severely criticized, and Turgenev resolved to remain outside Russia, where he could continue his lifelong love affair with the French singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia. His last long works were Smoke (1867) and Virgin Soil (1877), both of which treated social themes. Turgenev also wrote several plays, including A Month in the Country (1850), in which he made several dramatic innovations that Chekhov later developed, and the comedy A Provincial Lady (1851). His superbly crafted novellas and short stories are considered his greatest works, including "First Love" (1870), "A Lear of the Steppe" (1870), and "Torrents of Spring" (1872). His works remain enormously popular in the USSR. Almost all of them are available in English.

Bibliography: See his Literary Reminiscences (1958); his letters (tr. 1960); biographies by D. Magarshack (1954), A. Yarmolinsky (rev. ed. 1959), and J. A. T. Lloyd (1942, repr. 1971); study by R. Freeborn (1960).

Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich (1818–83), Russian novelist and playwright and the first Russian writer to find success in Europe. His novels include A Nest of Gentlefolk (1859), On the Eve (1860), Fathers and Sons (1862), in which, in Bazarov, he created a nihilist hero, Smoke (1867), and Virgin Soil (1877). His greatest short stories are ‘Asya’ (1858), ‘First Love’ (1860), and ‘Torrents of Spring’ (1870). His best play is A Month in the Country (1850).

He lived for many years in Western Europe, and visited England many times: he was acquainted with Dickens, G. Eliot, Browning, and many other literary figures. He was one of the earliest admirers of H. James, on whom he had substantial influence. Perhaps the greatest English debt to him is owed by G. A. Moore, whose whole mature career was given shape by the discovery of Turgenev's artistry. By 1890 most of Turgenev's major work had appeared in English. The most complete early translation is C. Garnett's Turgenev—The Novels and Tales (1894–9), the edition through which he exerted his influence on such writers as Galsworthy, Conrad, and V. Woolf.