In the spring of 1878 there was living in Moscow, in a small wooden house in Shabolovka, a young man of five-and-twenty, called Yakov Aratov. With him lived his father’s sister, an elderly maiden lady, over fifty, Platonida Ivanovna. She took charge of his house, and looked after his household expenditure, a task for which... Read More

We all settled down in a circle and our good friend Alexandr Vassilyevitch Ridel (his surname was German but he was Russian to the marrow of his bones) began as follows: I am going to tell you a story, friends, of something that happened to me in the 'thirties ... forty years ago as you... Read More

TO JOSEPH CONRAD WHOSE ART IN ESSENCE OFTEN RECALLS THE ART AND ESSENCE OF TURGENEV The six tales now translated for the English reader were written by Turgenev at various dates between 1847 and 1881. Their chronological order is:— Pyetushkov, 1847 The Brigadier, 1867 A Strange Story, 1869 Punin and Baburin, 1874 Old Portraits, 1881... Read More

TURGENEV was the first writer who was able, having both Slavic and universal imagination enough for it, to interpret modern Russia to the outer world, and Virgin Soil was the last word of his greater testament. It was the book in which many English readers were destined to make his acquaintance about a generation ago,... Read More

An examination of A Lear of the Steppes is of especial interest to authors, as the story is so exquisite in its structure, so overwhelming in its effects, that it exposes the artificiality of the great majority of the clever works of art in fiction. A Lear of the Steppes is great in art because... Read More

In this masterly unromantic novel, Turgenev drew a character, Bazarov, who served to express what he taught us to call Nihilism, and made a movement into a man. In Russia itself the effect of the story was astonishing. The portrait of Bazarov was immediately and angrily resented as a cold travesty. The portraits of the... Read More

Marya Dmitrievna Kalitin, a widow. Marfa Timofyevna Pestov, her aunt. Sergei Petrovitch Gedeonovsky, a state councillor. Fedor Ivanitch Lavretsky, kinsman of Marya. Elisaveta Mihalovna (Lisa), daughters of Marya. Lenotchka, Shurotchka, an orphan girl, ward of Marfa. Nastasya Karpovna Ogarkoff, dependent of Marfa. Vladimir Nikolaitch Panshin, of the Ministry of the Interior. Christopher Fedoritch Lemm, a... Read More

The author of the Dvoryanskoe Gnyezdo, or "Nest of Nobles," of which a translation is now offered to the English reader under the title of "Liza," is a writer of whom Russia may well be proud.[1] And that, not only because he is a consummate artist,—entitled as he is to take high rank among those... Read More

I was then five-and-twenty,—that was a sufficient indication that I had a past, said he, beginning. My own master for some little time, I resolved to travel,—not to complete my education, as they said at the time, but to see the world. I was young, light-hearted, in good health, free from every care, with a... Read More

The brilliant, spring day was inclining toward the evening, tiny rose-tinted cloudlets hung high in the heavens, and seemed not to be floating past, but retreating into the very depths of the azure. In front of the open window of a handsome house, in one of the outlying streets of O * * * the... Read More

Turgenev is an author who no longer belongs to Russia only. During the last fifteen years of his life he won for himself the reading public, first in France, then in Germany and America, and finally in England. In his funeral oration the spokesman of the most artistic and critical of European nations, Ernest Renan,... Read More

Anyone who has chanced to pass from the Bolhovsky district into the Zhizdrinsky district, must have been impressed by the striking difference between the race of people in the province of Orel and the population of the province of Kaluga. The peasant of Orel is not tall, is bent in figure, sullen and suspicious in... Read More

VILLAGE OF SHEEP'S SPRINGS, March 20, 18—. The doctor has just left me. At last I have got at something definite! For all his cunning, he had to speak out at last. Yes, I am soon, very soon, to die. The frozen rivers will break up, and with the last snow I shall, most likely,... Read More

TO THE MEMORY OF STEPNIAK WHOSE LOVE OF TURGENEV SUGGESTED THIS TRANSLATION In studying the Russian novel it is amusing to note the childish attitude of certain English men of letters to the novel in general, their depreciation of its influence and of the public's 'inordinate' love of fiction. Many men of letters to-day look... Read More