Turgenev, Ivan (Sergeyevich)

Ivan Turgenev.

(credit: From the collection of David Magarshack)

(born Nov. 9, 1818, Oryol, Russia—died Sept. 3, 1883, Bougival, near Paris, France) Russian novelist, poet, and playwright. His years at the University of Berlin convinced him of the West's superiority and the need for Russia to Westernize. He lived in Europe after c. 1862. He is known for realistic, affectionate portrayals of the Russian peasantry and for penetrating studies of the Russian intelligentsia who were attempting to move the country into a new age. His most famous early work is “The Diary of a Superfluous Man” (1850), which supplied the epithet “superfluous man” for the weak-willed intellectual protagonist common in 19th-century Russian literature. He gained fame with the short-story cycle A Sportman's Sketches (1852), which criticizes serfdom. His dramatic masterpiece, A Month in the Country (1855), and the novel Rudin (1856) followed. His interest in change and intergenerational differences is reflected in the controversial Fathers and Sons (1862), his greatest novel. Turgenev's work is distinguished from that of his contemporaries by its sophisticated lack of hyperbole, its balance, and its concern for artistic values. His greatest work was always topical, committed literature, having universal appeal in the elegance of the love story and the psychological acuity of the portraiture.