A Month In The Country-A Drama by Ivan Turgenav(1850) Translated by Constance Garnett, 1899

Last month I read a marvellous book The Anna Karenina Fix -Life Lessons From Russian Literature by Viv Groskup. In a chapter on Ivan Turgenav she focuses on his drama A Month In The Country. I have read a bit of his work but never a play. So inspired by Groskup I have read now this play, in translation by Constance Garnett.

"This is where Turgenev comes in. No one writes better about unrequited love. Real life is about quiet, slow, awkward moments of humiliation. And what greater humiliation is there than loving someone far, far more than they love you?" Viv Groskup

A Month In The Country,set in a rural dacha, is a story about ill-advised unrequited love,lives ruined with no hope but to try to move on emotionally.

.

Turgenev was for fourty years madly in love with a married French opera singer, Pauline Viaradot. Groskup talks a lot about this. For sure he loved her much much more than 

The cast

Natalya Petrovna, wife of a rich landowner, 29

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Rakitin, a family friend, in love with Natalya, 30

Aleksei Nikolayevich Belyaev, a new young tutor of Natalya's son Kolya, 21

Arkadi Sergeyevich Islayev, a rich landowner, husband of Natalya, 36

Kolya, son of Natalya and Islayev, 10

Vera Aleksandrovna (Verochka), Natalya's ward, 17

Anna Semyonovna Islayeva, Arkadi's mother, 58

Lizaveta Bogdanovna, a companion, 37

Adam Ivanovich Schaaf, a German tutor, 45

Afanasi Ivanovich Bolshintsov, a neighbour, 48

Ignati Ilyich Shpigelsky, a doctor, 40

Matvei, a servant, 40

Katya, a servant, 20

Natalya Petrovna, a 29 year-old, is married to Arkadi Islaev, a rich landowner seven years her senior.She is Bored with life and welcomes the attentions of Mikhail Rakitin as her devoted but frustrated admirer, without ever letting their friendship develop into a love affair.

The arrival of the handsome 21-year-old student Aleksei Belyaev as tutor to her son Kolya ends her boredom. Natalya falls in love with Aleksei, but so does her ward Vera, the Islaevs' 17-year-old foster daughter. To rid herself of her rival, Natalya proposes that Vera should marry a rich old neighbour, but the rivalry remains unresolved.

Rakitin struggles with his love for Natalya, and she wrestles with hers for Aleksei, while Vera and Aleksei draw closer. Misunderstandings arise, and when Arkadi begins to have his suspicions, both Rakitin and Aleksei are obliged to leave. As other members of the household drift off to their own worlds, Natalya's life returns to a state of boredom.

Groskup sees as the life lesson of A Month In The Country to be careful not to fall in love with someone who will never love you back. Sometimes male characters talking to each other see love as a curse. 

 

An Unofficial Marriage : A Novel About Pauline Viadot and Ivan Turgenev by Joie Davidow - 2021 - 283 pages

 

An Unofficial Marriage : A Novel About Pauline Viadot and Ivan Turgenev by Joie Davidow - 2021 - 283 pages 

Paris in July - 2021 - Hosted by Thyme for Tea

I give this marvelous novel my complete endorsement.  The more you know and have read in Turgenev the more you will love this book.

The salient facts below of Turgenev’s life are derived from the novel 

Ivan Turgenav 

Born November 9, 1818 - Oryal, Russia - his notoriously cruel very rich mother owned 6000 serfs 

 

1843 - St.Perrsburg, Russian. Falls deeply in Love with The opera singer Pauline Viradot after seeing her in The Barber of Seville.

This encounter will shape both of their lives from then on.

In 1845 he leaves Russia to follow Paulina all over Europe.  He becomes part of the household of Paulina and her husband.  He will worship her the rest of life, putting her above everything else. He buys prpoprrties in 

Paris, Venice, Baden-Baden and Rome to be able to attend her performances.  Paris becomes his spiritual home..

1852 - publishes A Sportsman’s Sketches

1862 - Father and Sons

Much of his time was spent in Paris.  He became good friends with Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant and other Paris based writers and artists.He was an important figure in the Russian Émigré Community.  He was fluent in French as were most aristocratic Russians  He became very involved in the Paris centered European opera world.  He maintained residences in Paris while periodically traveling back to Russia to deal with business matters from property holdings and concerns over his very extensive publications.  There was unsubstantiated gossip that he was the father of two of Pauline’s four children.  A child he had with a serf woman was moved to Paris to join the Viardot household.  He never married. Davidow depicts him as having a number of casual relationships with Russian women from his social caste.  The serf mother of his daughter was paid by him for sex and to give up her daughter to be raised as a Turgenev.

His relationship with Paulina lasted forty years.

Died September 3, 1883 - Bougival, France 

Paulina Viradot

Born: 18 July 1821 - Paris - her fsther was a fsmous singer 

1840 to his death 1883 she was married to Louis Viradot.

Louis Viardot was a French writer, art historian, art critic, theatrical figure, and translator. He managed his wife’s very succesful career as an opera singer 

Died: 18 May 1910, - Paris. She had four children and acted as a mother to Turgenav’s dsughter.

An Unofficial Marriage has much to offer besides just facts of the lives of a great author and famous opera singer.  Opera singers were the super stars of the 19th century.  The opening sequence in which Ivan first encounters Paulina is very lushly  done.  Paulina is not a conventional beauty, if anything a bit plain.  Why did Ivan fall so deeply Under her thrall on first encounter?  He is portrayed as mesmerized by the power of her preformance.  He arranged a meeting with her.  He knew and respected that she was married. He got along very well with her husband, almost an  older brother, they both loved hunting, they collaborated on Pushkin translations.  Ivan had his own suite in the Paris mansion.  Louis knew Ivan loved Pauline, he wondered is Ivan my wife’s lover?  As time went by he knew of the gossip.  Davidow shows us how full of gossip the Parisian opera seen appears.  At least two of the children strongly resembled Louis so they did have a passionate connection as well as practical.

Davidow’s narrative does include several very powerful sexual encounters between Paulina and Ivan. (In her epilogue she acknowledges there is no way to know if they ever had sex.). Paulina has a very strong attraction to Ivan as potrayed.  

As the forty plus years covered pass, much happens. Ivan’s daughter turns into a nearly spoiled brat.  Paulina’s children marry.  I enjoyed learning of their futures.  Louis dies, then Ivan and Paulina no longer has great drawing power but enough to live comfortably.

There is a lot to be learned about the business side of 19th century European opera here.  These are  tumultous times in French and Russian politics and Davidow takes us there. Davidow tells us How Turgenev treated Family serfs after his mother died.

I loved this book.  

It is said that Turgenev is the most French Russian writer.  Maybe we can see a bit why now.

There is a detailed bio of The author on her website 

http://www.joiedavidow.com/index.html

The Dream by Ivan Turgenev (1877, translated by Constance Garnett, 1897)

The Dream (some would classify this work as a short story, others as novella, the reading time will be for most all under thirty minutes) is the first work by Turgenev I have so far read with a supernatural overcast.  Turgenev had serious mother issues (she ruled over 5000 serfs with a very cruel hand to the point of severe whippings  for petty offenses), his biographers said she treated Turgenev very harshly after the death of his father.  This sort of a cold indifferent mother abused and abandoned is very much like the mother of the first person narrator of The Dream.  

Garnett's prose beautifully sets the story in motion

"I was living at that time with my mother in a little seaside town. I was in my seventeenth year, while my mother was not quite five -and -thirty; she had married very young. When my father died, I was only seven years old, but I remember him well. My mother was a fair -haired woman, not very tall, with a charming, but always sad -looking face, a soft, tired voice and timid gestures. In her youth she had been reputed a beauty, and to the end she remained attractive and pretty. I have never seen deeper, tenderer, and sadder eyes, finer and softer hair; I never saw hands so exquisite. I adored her, and she loved me…. But our life was not a bright one; a secret, hopeless, undeserved sorrow seemed for ever gnawing at the very root of her being.....

No! something more lay hidden in it, which I did not understand, but of which I was aware, dimly and yet intensely aware, whenever I looked into those soft and unchanging eyes, at those lips, unchanging too, not compressed in bitterness, but, as it were, for ever set in one expression. I have said that my mother loved me; but there were moments when she repulsed me, when my presence was oppressive to her, unendurable. At such times she felt a sort of involuntary aversion for me, and was horrified afterwards, blamed herself with tears, pressed me to her heart. I used to ascribe these momentary outbreaks of dislike to the derangement of her health, to her unhappiness…."

The story unravels in a very suspenseful way the mystery behind the sadness of the mother.

My Posts on Ivan Turgenev

Clara Militch and "Mumu" - A Novella and a Short Story by Ivan Turgenev

If you have a favorite work by Ivan Turgenev, please share your thoughts.

Since I began my blog I have read and posted on Ivan Turgenev's most famous work Fathers and Sons, a few  of his short stories and four of his novellas.  Today I completed one of his lesser know novellas, Clara Militch (1883, in translation by Constance Garnett).  I also read three essays by Henry James on Turgenev, included in the Delphi Publishing's E book edition of the complete works of Ivan Turgenev.  In them James mentions a Turgenev short storiy he especially admired, "Mumu" so I decided to read it.  Frank O'Connor in the leading  book  on the short story, The Lonely Voice A Study of the Short Story said the short stories of Turgenev are world class cultural treasures of the highest order.

Clara Militch is perhaps not as powerful a work as First Love or Faust but it certainly worth reading. The title character is well known actress.  The work focuses on a young man's infatuation with her and his attempt to unravel the reasons behind her suicide by poison.  He has disturbed dreams in which he thinks he sees her.  All and all a decent story with interesting plot turns and well developed characters.

"Mumu" (1868) is set on a large country  estate about 150 Kilometers from Moscow.  Henry James, who knew Turgenev well and greatly admired his work and person, saw the tyrannical capriciously cruel mistress of the estate as loosely based on Turgenev's mother who owned five thousand serfs.  The story does a wonderful job of bring to life what it was like to be a serf.  There are all kind of serfs, from field workers, maids and cooks to physicians (there were two serf physicians, one for the mistress on.y and one for the serfs, neither had the slightest real medical knowledge),  one of the serfs is a huge man, a foot taller than anyone and a deaf mute.  He is a perfect serf, fetching water, keeping the yard up, watching out for intruders and is completely subservient to the mistress.  She moved him from her Moscow estate because he was such a good worker.  He develops a crush on one of the maids.  The problem is that the mistress decides to marry her to one of her other serfs, a business manager, in hopes the marriage will sober him up.  The business manager is happy over the marriage but in fear of the deaf mute.   However the mute accepts what he must.  One day he rescues a three week old puppy from drowning in the river, he takes her back to his garret and names her "Mumu".  The name is one of the few sounds he can make.   As the story progresses Turgenev does a masterful life of letting us see how the mistress runs her estate, taking great pleasure in her power over her serfs.  I really hope others will read this wonderful story so I will leave the deeply moving close unspoiled.  

Mel u

"My Neighbor Radilov" by Ivan Turgenev (1856, story four in his Sportsman's Sketches, translated by Constance Garnett, 1895)

A Post by Ambrosia Boussweau, European Correspodent of The Reading Life

For a while now I have been reading on and off novellas and short stories by Ivan Turgenev (1818 to 1883).  Ford Madox Ford in The March of Literature said the short stories of Turgenev are among the greatest of all literary works.  The stories were drawn from his experiences as a outs an hunting on the vast estate of his mother, said to include over 5000 serfs, basically slaves.  The stories were all first published individually before being published in 1856 in Sportsman's Sketches.  

For those totally new to Turgenev, I would suggest you first read his very famous novel, Fathers and Sons.

"My Neighbor Radilaw" is a simple story.  The narrator is out on the estate hunting partridges.  A man unknown to him approaches and tells him he is his neighbor, Radilov.  After a bit of conversation Radoliv invites him back to his place for Sunday dinner.  We meet his mother and and the widow of Radilov's brother.  Sunday dinner is a river fish feast with bountiful sides.  The mother is largely silent.  After the meal Radilov invites him to return anytime he is nearby.  On his return visit he finds something shocking has happened.  

The beauty in this story is in how Turgenev makes us feel we are wandering the estate with him.  

Ambrosia Boussweau 

"Raspberry Spring" by Ivan Turgenev (1852, from A Sportman's Sketches, translated by Constance Garrnett, 1895)

Prior Posts on Ivan Turgenev

"The master was all a master should be,’ continued the old man, dropping his line in again, ‘and he had a kind heart too. He would give you a blow at times, and before you could look round, he’d forgotten it already. There was only one thing: he kept mistresses. Ugh, those mistresses! God forgive them! They were the ruin of him too; and yet, you know, he took them most generally from a low station. You would fancy they would not want much? Not a bit —they must have everything of the most expensive in all Europe!" - from "A Sportman's Sketches"

"A Sportsman's Sketches may well be the greatest collection of short stories ever written"-Frank O'Connor 

Frank O'Connor loved the short stories of Ivan Turgenev (1818 to 1883.)   He said if he were forced to name the two best short stories ever written they would both be by Ivan Turgenev.  Ford Madox Ford said Turgenev's short stories were among the greatest of all world cultural treasures.

"Raspberry Spring" is the third story in Ivan Turgenev's (1818 to 1882) first published work, a collection of short stories, A Sportsman's Sketches.  The realistic portrayal of the lives of serfs caused a great deal of social controversy.  As I read the stories in the collection it is still shocking to hear the serfs described as being sold or owned by a certain Nobel.

"Raspberry Spring" is set on a hot August day on the estate of the narrator's family.  He is out for a walk in the company of one of his dogs.  It is not really a plotted story, just as the collection title suggests, a sketch of one of a Sportman's days.  The beauty of the countryside is marvelously evoked.  As he walks along he sees two serfs fishing.  It was disturbing to have them described as property in a very casual fashion.  We learn of area dramas and we watch the serfs fish.  We learn of the very hard life of a serf whose master's house burned down.  The master"s family moved to their Moscow property, leaving the old serf with no means of support or no place to live.  

This is a beautifully done story about a for better or worse doomed way of life.  I am currently reading a marvelous historical work, Former People:  The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy by Douglas Smith and the short stories of Turgenev are a perfect accompaniment for them.

Those new to Turgenev should first read his Fathers and Sons.  I am very fond of his novellas, especially First Love and A Lear of the Steppes.  

Upon completion of my read through of Honore de Balzac's The Comedie Humaine, I may begin a read through of Turgenev.

What are your favorite works by Turgenev?

Mel u

First Love by Ivan Turgenev (1860, translated by Constance Garnett)

First Love is Ivan Turgenev's most read novella.  A group of people are looking for ways to pass the time (now they would all be on devices) and agree to tell each other stories about their first loves. A man of advanced years agrees to go first and tells us of his love, at age 16, for the daughter of a neighbor. First Love is just an amazing work, the remembered experiences are marvelously rendered.  I would put it and his Faust and King Lear of the Steepes with the best of the works I have ever read, especially First Love.  Seemingly simple, it is a story of great emotional depth and complexity.  There is a scene in the story, readers will know it, that is overwhelming powerful.

Please share your experinces with Turgenev with us.  

Mel u

Faust by Ivan Turgenev (1855, translated by Constance Garnett, 1899)

Recently I read Ivan Turgenev's beautiful novella, King Lear of the Steppes.  Yesterday I read another of his novellas, also echoing  on one of the great works of world literature, his Faust.  I don't want to try to decide which is better, both are more than worth your time.  I am sure Faust will be more meaningful to you, I have not, if you have read Goethe's Faust, Part One but maybe in a fabulous bonus it will motivate you to read Goethe.  

The basic plot is elegantly simple.  A man has been away for a long time.  He returns and a young girl has been transformed into a  young woman, now at seventeen married to one of his friends.  She has never read any literary works, her father did not belief they were suitable for girls.  The narrator gives her Faust and it very much changes how she sees the world.  The man falls in love with her but he does not pursue any dishonorable connections.  There are many wonderful descriptions of the Russian countryside.  This is a sublime  work.

As we read older works, we must accept that a seventeen year old girl is considered a grown woman and there seems to be no impropriety in a much older man being interested in or married to what we see as a girl.  There are a lot of reasons for these alterations in attitude.  Part of it is related to longer life expectancy producing fewer widowers and young widows.

                      Constance Garnett 

I will soon begin Turgenev's most famous novella, First Love.

I really enjoyed reading Faust.

Mel u

King Lear of the Steppes by Ivan Turgenev (1870, translated by Constance Garnett, 1899)

King Lear of the Steppes  by Ivan Turgenev has been on my To Be Read list for a long time.  Last month I read King Lear so I decided no time better than now  for it to be at last read.  The novella way exceeded my expectations.  I have previously read and posted on his by far most famous work, Fathers and Sons as well as The Diary of a Superflous Man, and a few, too few, of his short stories.  He is considered the first writer to depict the lives of ordinary Russians, serfs and peasants in a realistic fashion as full human figures.

People say this is among the most personal of Turgenev's works.  It is narrated by a wealthy young country gentleman living on his mother's estate and under her control.  She is very much the queen of her estate, her serfs are her property.  One of the central figures in the story, he is the King Lear figure, is a well of peasant with an estate of his own.  The mother is his benefactor and he is totally subservient to her, seeking her advice on major decisions.  I am not quite clear what is legal bond to is but she is his master in fact.

He is getting old so he decides to deed all of his property over to his two daughters, under the assumption he will  live out his days on the estate and be given living money.  Everyone,including the mother, try to dissuade him from this, saying he will lose everything and be turned out.  

The conclusion is very powerful, almost overwhelming.  I knew something bad was going to happen but I was left deeply saddened by the despair and darkness of the close.

There is much wonderful material on daily life, we see a bit about how serfs feel about their masters and I guess one who read the work for clues concerning the psyche of Turgenev would find grist in relationship of the mother and the narrator.

This is a very deep beautiful work of art, worthy to carry the name "King Lear" in title.

I think my next Turgenev will be another novella, First Love.

Mel u

"Punin and Baburin" by Ivan Turgenev (1874).

Frank O'Connor in his brilliantly and maddening book, The Lonely Voice:  A Study of the Short Story (as far as I know, the best and maybe only book worth owning on the short story) said that "Punin and Baburin" was the greatest of Ivan Turgenev (1813 to 1883- there is background information on him in my prior posts) short stories.  O'Connor flirts with the idea of saying it is the greatest of all short stories but he stops short of this. It is considered one of the most autobiographical of his works, drawing on his cruel mother and her abuse of the five thousand or so Russian peasants she owned.  She had absolute power over them and had severe punishments, including flogging to death, carried out when displeased.  Some credit Turgenev's stories as being instrumental in freeing the serfs.

We first meet the narrator of the story when old, looking back to when he was twelve, living on his grandmother's vast estate.   His grandmother has just had a serf who gave her a "sullen look" sold off to Siberia, close to a death sentence for most.  She asks one of her house servants if the man who has come to apply to be her new estate manager is here yet.  Quaking in terror the servant says yes.  The narrator is a lonely isolated boy inclined to poetry and Russian literature.   Compressing, if you are into short stories, you need to at some point read this, he becomes friends with the manager who in turn supports a friend.   Of course they run afoul of Grandmother when the companion speaks his mind about the brutal near slavery that most Russians were yoked with.  They are expelled.  We next pick up the narrator ten or so years later.  I really am not inclined to explicate the plot of this story any further.  We do come to meet the Punin and Baburin again several times over decades.  The ending is deeply sad.  One can feel the crushing weight of serfdom and the crushing of the psyche of the narrator, who by the end had inherited the estate, by his upbringing.   He is a man deeply divided and still unable to fully see the humanity in the "lower classes".

   This Constance Garnett translation of this story is in the public domain and you can easily find it online.

Mel u

Ivan Turgenev's First Short Story- "Hor and Kalinitch"

"Hor and Kalinitch" by Ivan Turgenev (1852, 21 pages)

The Short Fiction of Ivan Turgenev

A Reading Life Project

"A Sportsman's Sketches may well be the greatest collection of short stories ever written"-Frank O'Connor 

Frank O'Connor loved the short stories of Ivan Turgenev (1818 to 1883.)   He said if he were forced to name the two best short stories ever written they would both be by Ivan Turgenev.  (I think O'Connor is at his best when he talks of Turgenev and Guy de Maupassant.)   Ford Madox Ford said Turgenev's short stories were among the greatest of all cultural treasures of humanity, and he is including the great art and music of all time. He also said his stories were very hard to write about.  With these preliminaries out of the way (there is some background information on Turgenev in my prior posts on his work), I am very happy to announce that another Reading Life Project, The Short Fiction of Ivan Turgenev.   He wrote some 70 short stories, probably not much more than 1000 pages in all.  (As I am reading the stories on my Ipad I have to estimate the page lengths.)

"Hor and Kalinitch" is the very first short story by Turgenev.  It, like all the stories in Sportsman's Sketches is based on what he saw and learned while living on his mother's vast estate where she owned around five thousand serfs, over whom she basically held powers of life and death and whom she treated with great cruelty.   Some historians say that Turgenev's stories were in part responsible for the abolition of serfdom in Russia but I think this maybe a bit of a stretch.

In this story the narrator appears as an emotionally detached observer.    The story centers on two serfs, the title characters, owned by a small land holder.   One is very thrifty and  the other idealistic.  Going back to Frank O'Connor, author of the by far best book on the short stories (OK it will also drive you crazy), he says Turgenev's basic theme in all his work is his attempt to work out his own feelings that he was a weak ineffectual person, O'Connor says he was not, and his admiration for the "practical man" who knows how to do things.  

"Hor and Kalinitch" really is more of a sketch of life in the time and place than a plot centered work.   Turgenev's does a wonderful job of letting us see even now what it was like to live in Russia in the 1850s.   We feel like we are walking through an estate.   It is also a very funny story when it focuses on the landlord.

I have previously posted on his novel, Fathers and Sons, his novella, Diary of a Superfluous Man and his short story,  "Father Alexyei's Story".

Please share your experience with Turgenev with us.

Mel u

"Father Alexyei's Story" by Ivan Turgenev

"Father Alexyei's Story" by Ivan Turgenev (1852, 13 pages)

Irish Short Story Week

March 11 to July 1

Stories About Priests

Posts by Participants

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

My Prior Posts for ISSW Year Two

My Prior posts on Turgenev

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week, March 11 to July 1 (yes long week and I feel an Irish Short Story Year might happen in 2013).   All you have to do to join us is to post on one or more Irish short stories or a non-fiction book that relates to Irish literary culture and let me know about it. I also welcome guest posts.   Everything you need to participate is in the resources page including links to 1000s of stories.  As of today I am opening up the event to Latin American writers of Irish descent.   This will be harder for those of us who do not read Spanish to explore (there are stories in English) but it is important to me to show the vast influence of the Irish Short Story Writers.  I am also as of now opening the events to Irish New Zealand writers.  I plan to add resources on these areas soon but I do need help on the Latin America area.   There are plans for Argentine Irish Day in the works now.

Frank O'Connor loved the short stories of Ivan Turgenev (1818 to 1883.)   He said if he were forced to name the two best short stories ever written they would both be by Ivan Turgenev.  Ford Madox Ford said Turgenev's short stories were among the greatest of all cultural treasures of humanity, and he is including the great art and music of all time.   With these preliminaries out of the way (there is some background information on Turgenev in my prior posts on his work), I am very happy to announce that Turgenev has made his way to Dublin.   He left from Paris in the company of his best friend Gustav Flaubert.  Flaubert will not participate in this event but I highly advise reading his Three Tales before you say he was not a short story writer.  The time is 1858, they arrive by steamship in Dublin in early fall evening.   A private escort has been arranged for them.  Expenses are of no concern as Turgenev's family owns five thousand serfs and miles and miles of land.  There first order of business is to request a tour of night town.   They will both stay with us for the duration of the event and will be at the party at Dunsanny Castle on July 2.

"Wake me when Mel stops
posting on these priest
stories"-Carmella

"Father Alexyei's Story" is about a Russian Orthodox priest.  ( Russian Orthodox priests were allowed to marry.)    The story is told in the first person by a man recalling his experiences of twenty years ago when, as a private inspector, he would make the circuit of his aunt's vast estates.   One of his job was to pay calls on the parish priests on the estates. All of the priests pretty much seemed the same to him except Father Alexyei.  Unlike the other priests he never asked anything for himself and had the most sorrowful and overwhelmed look he had ever seen on a human face.   He asks us the priest to tell him why he so sad and the rest of the story is taken up with the priests story about how his son has ruined his life as well as his own.  

The story is fully worthy of the claims O'Connor and Ford Madox Ford make for the work of Turgenev  I will not tell the father's story.  If you want to read it you will find it here.

Mel u