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Ivan
Turgenev (1818-1883)
Although Turgenev’s supreme accomplishment was his short stories and
novels he also made an important contribution to the development of Russian
drama. Most of Turgenev’s plays
were written between 1845-1852, early in his literary career.
His plays preceded Stringberg, Ibsen and those giants of Russian
literature: Tolstoy, Chekhov, and
Gorky. Turgenev’s early
theatrical work, The Family Change was
originally banned for its critical portrayal of the nobility.
This was the first of Turgenev’s many encounters with the censor
because of his strong commitment to a realistic representation of all classes,
including the nobility.
Other early plays Penniless (1845), The Bachelor
(1849) shows the notable influence of Gogol’s realism, but as his plays did
not exhibit Gogol’s tendency toward satirical social criticism, Turgenev
failed to win appreciation among critics and the popularity on the stage which
they deserved.
A Month in the Country probably
Turgenev’s best play, was composed under the title The
Student (1850), but changed upon publication in 1854.
The play is based on Balzac’s La
Maratre (1848). The theme in A
Month in the Country is a familiar theme in Turgenev’s novels also, i.e.
the examination of the effect of a newcomer’s arrival upon a small social
circle. The circle in its turn
subjects the newcomer to scrutiny through the relationship that develops between
the ‘heroine,’ who always belongs to the ‘place’ of the story, and the
newcomer-hero. Promise of happiness
is offered, but the ending of the relationship is invariably calamitous.
Turgenev was himself a wealthy man with a large estate inherited after
his mother’s death; and his personal experiences may have had considerable
influence on him in the writing of A Month
in the Country: In 1843 he met
and fell in love with the renowned singer Pauline Viardot.
His relationship with the married Mme. Viardot is generally considered to
have been platonic, and there is a definite analogy here to the Rakitin-Natalya
axis of the play. However, some of
his letters seem to suggest a greater intimacy.
Turgenev never married—though in 1842 he had an illegitimate daughter.
He later entrusted the child’s upbringing to Mme. Viardot.
Early in the 1860s Turgenev, upset at the almost unanimously hostile
reception at home to most of his literary works, left Russia to live in Germany.
For most of the 1870s he lived in Paris where he became an honored
ambassador of Russian culture. George
Sand, Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola and Henry James were only a few of the
contemporary writers with whom he corresponded and who sought his company.
In 1879, he was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University.
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