by Ivan Turgenev دﺧﺎن {Read Ebook {PDF EPUB IVAN TURGENEV. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a 19 th -century Russian writer famous for his novels and short fiction stories ( Fathers and Sons, A Sportman’s Sketches, Rudin, A Nest of Gentlefolk, First Love ). Moscow occupied an important place in Turgenev’s life, having grown up and studied here. His mother’s house has survived to today and is now the site of the Turgenev Museum. It is this house that Turgenev described in his short story, Mumu . Ivan Turgenev was born into a nobleman’s family in Oryol a city located on the Oka River, approximately 360 kilometers south-southwest of Moscow , in 1818. His father Sergey Turgenev married Varvara Lutovinova, when she was about 30 years old. She was six years older than her husband and was not particularly beautiful but was immensely wealthy. They had three sons, Ivan being the second-born. HIS YOUTH IN MOSCOW. Turgenev spent the first five years of his life at his parents’ country estate of Spasskoye-Lutovino Russian: Спасское-Лутовиново , not far from Oryol. The writer-to-be visited Moscow for the first time in 1822 for a visit with his parents and he moved to Moscow for good in 1824, at the age of six. The family came here with the intention to give the children a decent education. At first, the Turgenevs did not have their own home in Moscow and, instead, rented a house on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Stree Russian: Bolshaya Nikitskaya ulitsa or Большая Никитская улица t (present-day Block 1, 57/46, Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street); this is Ivan Turgenev’s first address in Moscow. In the autumn of 1824, his mother Varvara Petrovna purchased a house on Sadovo-Samotyochnaya Street Russian: Sadovo- Samotechnaya ulitsa or Садово-Самотечная улица , but at the beginning of 1825 the head of the household took the children back to the countryside. Turgenev’s biographers still do not know the reason for this hasty departure. The Turgenevs came back to Moscow in 1827. Still eager to give their children a good education, Sergey and Varvara Turgenev enrolled them in a private boarding school run by Weidenhammer, located at the corner of Gagarinsky and Starokonyushenny Lanes Russian: Gagarinskiy i Starokonyushennyi pereulki or Гагаринский и Староконюшенный переулки (the building has not survived). There were about 30 boarding schools in Moscow, but the Turgenevs chose this one, probably because it admitted only the children of the noblest and wealthiest families, trained them to enroll in military schools and included an in-depth and simultaneous study of several foreign languages. Turgenev conveyed this school’s atmosphere in his short story entitled Yakov Pasynkov , whose eponymous protagonist was loosely based on a classmate of Turgenev’s. Ivan Turgenev attended this boarding school intermittently for three years. A cholera outbreak caused this institution to shut, and starting in 1831 Turgenev was homeschooled. His mother invited the school’s best teachers to give private lessons to her sons, including lessons in the Russian, French and Latin languages, mathematics and dancing. The Turgenevs lived at 15, Gagarinsky Lane (Kvashnin-Steingel’s mansion) from 1830 to 1831. The house is still standing. Moving from one address to another every year developed into a routine, which was the usual practice for Muscovite aristocrats who went to their countryside residences in summertime and looked for appropriate housing in Moscow for the winter. The Turgenevs preferred to settle in the Arbat Russian: Арбат quarter, then inhabited mostly by aristocrats. From 1831 to 1832, the Turgenevs rented the still surviving mansion at 24, Sivtsev Vrazhek Lane Russian: pereulok Sivtsev Vrazhek or переулок Сивцев Вражек , and later another house in Kislovsky Lane Russian: Kislovskiy pereulok or Кисловский переулок . In the summer of 1833, while 14-year-old Turgenev was preparing for admission into the Moscow University Russian: Moskovskiy universitet or Московский университет , his parents rented a summer house not far from the Donskoy Monastery Russian: Donskoy monastyir or Донской монастырь . Turgenev would later give a detailed description of this period of his life in First Love . “The affair took place in the summer of 1833. I was living in Moscow, in my parents’ house. They had hired a villa near the Kaluga barrier, opposite the Neskuchny Park. I was preparing for university, but was working very little and was not in a hurry… Our villa consisted of a wooden manor-house with columns and two tiny outlying wings”. Ivan showed extraordinary abilities and became – even before he turned 15 – a first-year student at the Language Arts Department of the Moscow University, admitted on an exceptional basis (9, Mokhovaya Street Russian: ulitsa Mohovaya or улица Моховая , now housing the Faculty of Journalism of the Moscow State University Russian: fakultet zhurnalistiki MGU or факультет журналистики МГУ ). The director of all schools of the Moscow Governorate Russian: Moskovskaya guberniya or Московская губерния saw to it that Ivan was granted admission to the university. He wrote to S. Uvarov, Minister of Education, as follows: “This boy knows so much that he could pass not only this kind of examination, but also the final examinations”. However, Turgenev studied for just one year at the Moscow University, preferring to move to his brother in St. Petersburg, where he enrolled in the History and Philology Department of the St. Petersburg University Russian: Peterburgskiy universitet or Петербургский университет . Upon his graduation in 1838, Turgenev went to Germany for several years. Along with the heritage of world-famous people and great museums, there are many attractions in Moscow, which are not so popular, but still very remarkable. Beautiful temples in the Orthodox style, the unusual architecture of the Russian Middle Ages or the recent Soviet era, ballet and drama theaters – on our website you can learn more about sightseeing in Moscow. The HOUSE ON OSTOZHENKA STREET. While in Berlin, Turgenev received letters from his mother all the time, to which he replied only rarely. In 1840, Varvara Petrovna rented a mansion located on Ostozhenka Street Russian: ulitsa Ostozhenka or улица Остоженка and lived there until her death ten years later. She had never liked her mansion on Sadovo-Samotyochnaya Street and rented it before selling it in 1844. This building has not survived, and building № 12/2, Sadovo-Samotyochnaya Street is located on its site today. Turgenev’s mother called Ivan back to Moscow, hoping that her son would live with her, and the young writer set foot in this house on Ostozhenka Street in May 1841. Later, he would often visit his mother’s, but never remained there long. Turgenev’s biographer, N. Chernov estimated that, in ten years, Turgenev stayed at this house one year and a half at most, mainly on his way from St. Petersburg to his family estate of Spasskoye-Lutovino and back. In ten years, Turgenev stayed at his mother’s house two months in a row on two occasions only. His rooms were located in the mezzanine and the private rooms of Varvara Petrovna were one floor below. Turgenev described this house in his celebrated short story entitled Mumu Russian: Муму : “In one of the outlying streets of Moscow, in a gray house with white columns and a balcony, warped all askew, there once lived a lady, a widow, surrounded by a numerous household of serfs…”. It is here that Gerasim lived, and it is here that he brought from the Krymsky ford Russian: Kryimskiy brod or Крымский брод (on the site of the present-day Krymsky, or Crimean, Bridge Russian: Kryimskiy most or Крымский мост ) a puppet that he rescued from the mud. The characters in Mumu are all based on Varvara Petrovna’s “household of serfs” and Varvara herself. A GUEST IN MOSCOW. Turgenev went to St. Petersburg in 1843. He had tried to obtain a Master’s degree in Philosophy and become a professor at the Moscow University, but was denied due to formalities. In St. Petersburg, Turgenev joined the Ministry of the Interior Russian: Ministerstvo vnutrennih del or Министерство внутренних дел in 1843. One year later, while on leave, he came back to Moscow to visit his mother. He caught a bad cold and had to stay in Moscow until May 1844. Turgenev’s friends in Moscow, whom his mother mockingly called “the learned monkeys”, would often gather in his house, including Yakov Polonsky a leading Pushkinist poet , Timofey Granovsky a founder of mediaeval studies and others. Turgenev was working on a poem, Andrey , at this time. One year later, in April 1845, Turgenev came back to Moscow, this time with a view to attend performances by Pauline Viardot, who then became the love of his life. Turgenev attended all three sold-out concerts given by this celebrated opera singer at the Bolshoi Theatre Russian: Большой театр . When the performances were over, Turgenev showed Pauline Viardot and her husband around the Kremlin and Moscow. Turgenev’s mother did not approve of his infatuation with Pauline, although she recognized her talent: “What a good singer, the ruddy Gypsy!” Turgenev met Pauline Viardot for the first time in St. Petersburg. In October 1843, she went there on tour accompanied by her husband. Turgenev saw her on stage in The Barber of Seville and fell desperately in love with her. He had just turned 25, she was 22, but married. Turgenev met her husband, Louis Viardot, on a hunting trip and, thus, was able to meet Pauline. He might have gone unnoticed among her numerous admirers if it weren’t for his friendship with Louis Viardot, who found it exciting to talk to this Russian intellectual. In May 1845, Turgenev left his post at the Ministry of the Interior to get more free time and, after a while, followed his love to Europe. He returned to his house on Ostozhenka Street five years later. Turgenev and his brother bitterly quarreled with their mother and came back here only after her death. She died on 16 November 1850 and was buried in the family crypt located at the necropolis of the Donskoy Monastery (1, Donskaya Square Russian: Donskaya ploschad or Донская площадь ), the best-known aristocratic cemetery in Moscow. Busy with financial inheritance matters after her death, Turgenev spent three months in his mansion and then went back to Europe for some time. Many personalities of Moscow’s literary, artistic and scientific milieus visited Turgenev during his stay in Moscow. HIS RECOGNITION AND CELEBRITY. While in Moscow, Turgenev made his debut as a playwright. His comedies, A Provincial Lady and A Bachelor , were staged by the Maly Theatre Russian: Малый театр (1, Teatralny Driveway Russian: Teatralnyi proezd or Театральный проезд ) as the M. S. Shchepkin the most famous Russian Empire actor of the 19th century Special, and Turgenev attended the stage performances of the plays, both of which were warmly applauded by the audience. Turgenev left the house at Ostozhenka Street forever in June 1851 and headed for his country estate of Spasskoye-Lutovino. Several months later, he returned to Moscow as a guest and stayed at his friends’ and in hotels. During his stay there, he met Nikolai Gogol a Russian dramatist of Ukrainian origin in the mansion of Count A. P. Tolstoy on Nikitsky Boulevard Russian: Nikitskiy bulvar or Никитский бульвар (7, Nikitsky Boulevard), where Turgenev was living at that time. Gogol praised his younger colleague thus: “Among all contemporary writers, it is Turgenev who is the most talented”. After his mother’s death, Turgenev returned to Moscow on many occasions, but only for short visits, staying at the house of I. Maslov, a friend of his and the managing director of a Moscow agency in charge of the property of the Imperial Family. The house was located in Turgenev’s favourite quarter, at 10, Prechistensky Boulevard Russian: Prechistenskiy bulvar or Пречистенский бульвар . In Moscow, Turgenev often used to meet his friends, relatives and publishers, and his complete works were published in five volumes in 1860 ( Short Novels and Stories by I. S. Turgene v had been published in three volumes in 1856). Turgenev’s brother Nikolai died in 1879, and Ivan Turgenev came to Moscow to arrange his inheritance matters. Numerous celebrations in his honour marked his visit. He was elected Honourary Fellow of the Colloquy of Lovers of the Russian Word Russian: Obschestvo lyubiteley rossiyskoy slovesnosti or Общество любителей российской словесности , whose meetings were held at the Moscow University. In March 1889, Turgenev met the Russian youth on several occasions, and Hermitage Russian: Эрмитаж , the most expensive restaurant in Moscow at that time, hosted a dinner in his honour (this building now houses the Moscow Modern School of Dramatic Theatre Russian: teatr «Shkola sovremennoy pesy» or театр «Школа современной пьесы» at Block 1, 29, Neglinnaya Street Russian: ulitsa Neglinnaya or улица Неглинная ). In summer 1880, Ivan Turgenev participated in the main event of the year in Moscow, the unveiling of the monument to Alexander Pushkin. The ceremony was followed by 3-day festivities held at the Assembly of the Nobility Russian: zal Blagorodnogo sobraniya or зал Благородного собрания (1, Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street Russian: ulitsa Bolshaya Dmitrovka or улица Большая Дмитровка , renamed House of the Unions Russian: Dom Soyuzov or Дом Союзов in Soviet times). Turgenev delivered a speech for the inauguration of the Pushkin monument, which he concluded with the words, “This is the monument to my teacher!” Turgenev made his last visit to Moscow in 1881, two years before his death, en route to his beloved estate of Spasskoye-Lutovino. He died in France and was later buried in Volkovo Cemetery Russian: Волково кладбище or Volkovo kladbische in St. Petersburg. The TURGENEV MUSEUM. The first and only Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev Museum in Moscow was opened in his house on Ostozhenka Street in 2007. In 1819, architect D. Fyodorov built a wooden house similar to many other houses constructed in Moscow in the aftermath of the Fire of 1812 broke out in 1812, when Russian troops and most of the remaining residents abandoned the city of Moscow just ahead of Napoleon's vanguard troops entering the city . This house can still be seen today, with its six-column porch, a mezzanine (invisible from the street) and seven windows decorating its façade. This house has always provided rental accommodation, and its renters have included the Russian writer Aksakov a 19th-century Russian literary figure remembered for his semi-autobiographical tales of family life , Pushkin’s aunt and Count F. Tolstoy a Russian nobleman from the well-known Tolstoy family nicknamed ‘The American’. This 200-year-old mansion has remained intact despite wars, revolutions and large-scale urban renewal, hence its great value to the city. In 2015, the I. S. Turgenev Museum was closed for renovation. The plan is to restore the house’s original interior, including the mezzanine floor where Turgenev’s private rooms are located. The mansion will be surrounded by a garden featuring the first monument to Turgenev in Moscow. The museum’s reconstruction is expected to finish in 2018, date which coincides with 200 years since Turgenev’s birth. The museum exhibition, centered around the role of Moscow in Turgenev’s life, will display items related to his childhood, youth and studies in Moscow. Several rooms will be devoted to the historical realities of the Turgenevs’ life in this house. For example, Ivan Turgenev’s rooms in the mezzanine floor will provide a glimpse into the world of a young man of the 1840s, and the grand suite of rooms on the main floor, where the private rooms of Turgenev’s mother were, will give you an insight into Varvara Petrovna’s outlook and character. A large exhibition complex will be dedicated to Turgenev’s literary career, which spanned a total of 45 years. A Turgenev-style park will be laid out on the museum’s grounds, which comprise both the former estate of Loshakovsky Russian: usadba Loshakovskogo or усадьба Лошаковского and the nearby I. S. Turgenev Public Garden Russian: skver imeni I.S. Turgeneva or сквер имени И.С. Тургенева . It will be planted with trees and bushes inspired by Turgenev’s literary works and parterres, which were loved by Varvara Petrovna. In short, this area will echo the world of the Russian country estate, a real nest of gentlefolk, so to speak, in memory of the great Russian writer, who so reverently and with such care conveyed the images and mannerisms of that exciting epoch of the 19 th century. Turgenev’ surviving addresses in Moscow : 37, Ostozhenka Street: I. S. Turgenev Museum. Block 1, 57/46, Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street: Turgenev’s first address in Moscow. 15, Gagarinsky Lane: Kvashnin-Steingel’s Mansion. 24, Sivtsev Vrazhek Street. 10, Prechistensky Boulevard: Building of a Moscow agency, where I. I. Maslov, a friend of Turgenev’s, lived. Bolshoi Theatre: Pauline Viardot performed here. Maly Theatre: Turgenev’s plays were staged here. 9, Mokhovaya Street: Building of the Moscow University. 8, Spasopeskovskaya Lane: Ivan Turgenev’s cousin, S. P. Turgenev, rented this house. 7, Nikitsky Boulevard: Count A. N. Tolstoy rented this building owned by Talyzin. Turgenev met Nikolai Gogol here. Block 1, 29, Neglinnaya Street: Hermitage Restaurant, where Turgenev was honoured in 1880 (today, Moscow Modern Drama School Theatre). 1, Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street: Assembly of the Nobility. 1-3, Donskaya Square: Nekropolis of the Donskoy Monastery. The author would like to express her gratitude to E. V. Polyanskaya, head of the I. S. Turgenev Museum (subdivision of the A. S. Pushkin Museum), for her help in preparing this article. Ivan Turgenev by Hisham Matar. I van Turgenev's novella First Love is one of the most perfect things ever written. It is a gesture of artistic defiance to the urgencies of the age – which demanded of an artist as Russian as Turgenev to "lift the nation" – yet it remains an authentic attendance to those urgencies: the old order versus the new, which, for Turgenev, often meant fathers versus sons. Like most of his work, it is "standing in the mud, looking at the stars": political yet aesthetic. One of my favourite stories about Turgenev is of how once, after he and his friend had spent from eight in the morning till past three in the afternoon talking, his friend turned to him and said: "You, Turgenev, are an incredible materialist. Here we have not yet finished discussing the nature of the deity and you are already talking about lunch." A "materialist" who is capable of conversing for seven hours about the "nature of the deity" might serve as a good definition of an artist. Unlike his better-known compatriots, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (it is impossible to speak about Turgenev without mentioning those two), Turgenev was not given to nationalistic romanticism or to giving speeches. He represented what to the modern state remains troublesome: a man who desires neither to lead nor to be followed. "I share no one's ideas; I have my own," a sentence Turgenev gave to Yevgeny Bazarov, that so-called early Bolshevik in Fathers and Sons , could have been something he said. Although I can't imagine Turgenev speaking it emphatically, or actually speaking it at all: I can only imagine him thinking it. It is for these reasons that Ivan Turgenev, the artist and the man, remains a role model in times like these. Ivan Turgenev. I fancied I was somewhere in Russia, in the wilds, in a simple country house. The room big and low pitched with three windows; the walls whitewashed; no furniture. Before the house a barren plain; gradually sloping downwards, it stretches into the distance; a grey monotonous sky hangs over it, like the canopy of a bed. I am not alone; there are some ten persons in the room with me. All quite plain people, simply dressed. They walk up and down in silence, as it were stealthily. They avoid one another, and yet are continually looking anxiously at one another. Not one knows why he has come into this house and what people there are with him. On all the faces uneasiness and despondency… all in turn approach the windows and look about intently as though expecting something from without. Then again they fall to wandering up and down. Among us is a small-sized boy; from time to time he whimpers in the same thin voice, 'Father, I'm frightened!' My heart turns sick at his whimper, and I too begin to be afraid… of what? I don't know myself. Only I feel, there is coming nearer and nearer a great, great calamity. The boy keeps on and on with his wail. Oh, to escape from here! How stifling! How weary! how heavy…. But escape is impossible. That sky is like a shroud. And no wind…. Is the air dead or what? All at once the boy runs up to the window and shrieks in the same piteous. First novels of Ivan Turgenev. Although Turgenev wrote “Mumu,” a remarkable exposure of the cruelties of serfdom, while detained in St. Petersburg, his work was evolving toward such extended character studies as Yakov Pasynkov (1855) and the subtle if pessimistic examinations of the contrariness of love found in “Faust” and “A Correspondence” (1856). Time and national events, moreover, were impinging upon him. With the defeat of Russia in the Crimean War (1854–56), Turgenev’s own generation, “the men of the forties,” began to belong to the past. The two novels that he published during the 1850s— Rudin (1856) and Home of the Gentry (1859)—are permeated by a spirit of ironic nostalgia for the weaknesses and futilities so manifest in this generation of a decade earlier. The first of Turgenev’s novels, Rudin, tells of an eloquent intellectual, Dmitry Rudin, a character modeled partly on Bakunin, whose power of oratory and passionately held belief in the need for progress so affect the younger members of a provincial salon that the heroine, Natalya, falls in love with him. But when she challenges him to live up to his words, he fails her. The evocation of the world of the Russian country house and of the summer atmosphere that form the backdrop to the tragicomedy of this relationship is evidence of Turgenev’s power of perceiving and recording the constancies of the natural scene. The vaster implications about Russian society as a whole and about the role of the Russian intelligentsia are present as shading at the edges of the picture rather than as colours or details in the foreground. Turgenev’s second novel, Home of the Gentry, is an elegiac study of unrequited love in which the hero, Lavretsky, is not so much weak as the victim of his unbalanced upbringing. The work is notable for the delicacy of the love story, though it is a shade mawkish on occasion. More important in terms of the author’s thought is the elaborate biography of the hero. In it is the suggestion that the influence of the West has inhibited Turgenev’s generation from taking action, forcing them to acknowledge finally that they must leave the future of Russia to those younger and more radical than themselves. The objectivity of Turgenev as a chronicler of the Russian intelligentsia is apparent in these early novels. Unsympathetic though he may have been to some of the trends in the thinking of the younger, radical generation that emerged after the Crimean War, he endeavoured to portray the positive aspirations of these young men and women with scrupulous candour. Their attitude to him, particularly that of such leading figures as the radical critics Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Nikolay Dobrolyubov, was generally cold when it was not actively hostile. His own rather self-indulgent nature was challenged by the forcefulness of these younger contemporaries. He moved away from an emphasis on the fallibility of his heroes, who had been attacked as a type by Chernyshevsky, using the short story “Asya” (1858) as his point of departure. Instead, Turgenev focused on their youthful ardour and their sense of moral purpose. These attributes had obvious revolutionary implications that were not shared by Turgenev, whose liberalism could accept gradual change but opposed anything more radical, especially the idea of an insurgent peasantry. The novel On the Eve (1860) deals with the problem facing the younger intelligentsia on the eve of the Crimean War and refers also to the changes awaiting Russia on the eve of the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. It is an episodic work, further weakened by the shallow portrayal of its Bulgarian hero. Although it has several successful minor characters and some powerful scenes, its treatment of personal relations, particularly of love, demonstrates Turgenev’s profound pessimism toward such matters. Such pessimism became increasingly marked in Turgenev’s view of life. It seems that there could be no real reconciliation between the liberalism of Turgenev’s generation and the revolutionary aspirations of the younger intelligentsia. Turgenev himself could hardly fail to feel a sense of personal involvement in this rupture. Turgenev’s greatest novel, Fathers and Sons (1862), grew from this sense of involvement and yet succeeded in illustrating, with remarkable balance and profundity, the issues that divided the generations. The hero, Bazarov, is the most powerful of Turgenev’s creations. A nihilist, denying all laws save those of the natural sciences, uncouth and forthright in his opinions, he is nonetheless susceptible to love and by that token doomed to unhappiness. In sociopolitical terms he represents the victory of the nongentry revolutionary intelligentsia over the gentry intelligentsia to which Turgenev belonged. In artistic terms he is a triumphant example of objective portraiture, and in the poignancy of his death he approaches tragic stature. The miracle of the novel as a whole is Turgenev’s superb mastery of his theme, despite his personal hostility toward Bazarov’s antiaestheticism, and his success in endowing all the characters with a quality of spontaneous life. Yet at the novel’s first appearance the radical younger generation attacked it bitterly as a slander, and the conservatives condemned it as too lenient in its exposure of nihilism. Turgenev’s novels are “months in the country,” which contain balanced contrasts such as those between youth and age, between the tragic ephemerality of love and the comic transience of ideas, between Hamlet’s concern with self and the ineptitudes of the quixotic pursuit of altruism. The last of these contrasts he amplified into a major essay, “Hamlet and Don Quixote” (1860). If he differed from his great contemporaries Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy in the scale of his work, he also differed from them in believing that literature should not provide answers to life’s question marks. He constructed his novels according to a simple formula that had the sole purpose of illuminating the character and predicament of a single figure, whether hero or heroine. They are important chiefly as detailed and deft sociopsychological portraits. A major device of the novels is 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 relation that develops between the heroine, who always belongs to the “place” of the fiction, and the newcomer-hero. The promise of happiness is offered, but the ending of the relation is invariably calamitous. Ivan Turgenev. The first Russian writer to be widely celebrated in the West, Turgenev managed to be hated by the radicals as well as by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky for his dedicated Westernism, bland liberalism, aesthetic elegance, and tendency to nostalgia and self-pity. He first gained fame with his subtle descriptions of peasant life in Zapiski okhotnika (1852; A Sportsman’s Sketches ), which contributed to the climate leading to the abolition of serfdom. He is celebrated for his novels about intelligent s and ideology: Rudin (1856), Nakanune (1860; On the Eve ), and Dym (1867; Smoke ). His most distinguished work, Ottsy i deti (1862; Fathers and Sons ), offers both an evenhanded portrait of the radical nihilists and an allegorical meditation on the conflict of generations. Other prose writers. The mid-19th century produced a number of other fine prose writers. Sergey Aksakov wrote fictionalized reminiscences: Semeynaya khronika (1856; The Family Chronicle ) and Detskiye gody Bagrova-vnuka (1858; Years of Childhood ). Aleksandr Herzen wrote his greatest works in emigration. In S togo berega (written 1847–50; From the Other Shore ), which combines essays and dialogues, he reflects with penetrating skepticism on the idea that history has knowable laws. Herzen’s Byloye i dumy (written 1852–68; My Past and Thoughts ) is regarded as the best Russian autobiography. Ivan Goncharov is the author of the comic masterpiece Oblomov (1859), a study of dreamy slothfulness: its hero spends a hundred pages getting out of bed. Nikolay Leskov is remembered for his short stories, including “Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda” (1865; “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District”), as well as for his novel Soboryane (1872; The Cathedral Folk ). Like Gogol before and Mikhail Zoshchenko after him, he was a master of skaz , a written narrative imitating a spontaneous oral account in its use of dialect, slang, or a particular idiom. A radical satirist and (remarkably) a government official who attained general’s rank, Mikhail Saltykov wrote (under the pseudonym N. Shchedrin) the extremely dark novel Gospoda Golovlyovy (1876; The Golovlyov Family ), portraying the relentless decline of a family. The agony of an intellectual who wants to merge with the common people and the intimate link of utopianism to madness figure as prominent themes in the short stories of Vsevolod Garshin, including “Khudozhniki” (1879; “Artists”) and “Krasny tsvetok” (1883; “The Red Flower”). Anton Chekhov. When Tolstoy abandoned the prosaic ethos, Chekhov, one of the greatest short story writers in world literature, remained loyal to it. Indeed, he reinterpreted it within his essentially bourgeois values, stressing the moral necessity of ordinary virtues such as daily kindness, cleanliness, politeness, work, sobriety, paying one’s debts, and avoiding self-pity. Replying to the intelligentsia’s demand for political tendentiousness, which he equated with a stifling intellectual conformity, he maintained that his only “tendency” was a protest against lying in all its forms. In his hundreds of stories and novellas, which he wrote while practicing medicine, Chekhov adopts something of a clinical approach to ordinary life. Meticulous observation and broad sympathy for diverse points of view shape his fiction. In his stories, an overt plot subtly hints at other hidden stories, and so the experience of rereading his fiction often differs substantially from that produced by a first reading. Especially noteworthy are “Skuchnaya istoriya” (written 1889; “A Dreary Story”), “Duel” (written 1891; “The Duel”), “Palata No. 6” (written 1892; “Ward Number Six”), “Kryzhovnik” (written 1898; “Gooseberries”), “Dushechka” (written 1899; “The Darling”), “Dama s sobachkoy” (written 1899; “The Lady with the Lap Dog”), “Arkhiyerey” (written 1902; “The Bishop”), and “Nevesta” (written 1903; “The Betrothed”). Along with Gogol’s The Inspector General , Chekhov’s plays are the high point of Russian drama. In his four great plays, Chayka (1896; The Seagull ), Dyadya Vanya (1897; Uncle Vanya ), Tri sestry (1901; Three Sisters ), and Vishnyovy sad (1904; The Cherry Orchard ), Chekhov’s belief that life is lived at ordinary moments and that histrionics are a dangerous lie found expression in a major innovation, the undramatic drama— or, as it is sometimes called, the theatre of inaction. The Silver Age. The period from the 1890s to 1917 was one of intellectual ferment, in which mysticism, aestheticism, Neo-Kantianism, eroticism, Marxism, apocalypticism, Nietzscheanism, and other movements combined with each other in improbable ways. Primarily an age of poetry, it also produced significant prose and drama. Russian Symbolism, which was influenced by French Symbolist poetry and the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900), is usually said to have begun with an essay by Dmitry Merezhkovsky, “O prichinakh upadka i o novykh techeniyakh sovremennoy russkoy literatury” (1893; “On the Reasons for the Decline and on the New Trends in Contemporary Russian Literature”). A poet and propagator of religious ideas, Merezhkovsky wrote a trilogy of novels, Khristos i Antikhrist (1896–1905; Christ and Antichrist ), consisting of Yulian otstupnik (1896; Julian the Apostate ), Leonardo da Vinchi (1901; Leonardo da Vinci ), and Pyotr i Aleksey (1905; Peter and Alexis ), which explores the relation of pagan and Christian views of the world. Symbolists. The Symbolists saw art as a way to approach a higher reality. The first wave of Symbolists included Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942), who translated a number of English poets and wrote verse that he left unrevised on principle (he believed in first inspiration); Valery Bryusov (1873– 1924), a poet and translator of French Symbolist verse and of Virgil’s Aeneid , who for years was the leader of the movement; Zinaida Gippius (1869–1945), who wrote decadent, erotic, and religious poetry; and Fyodor Sologub, author of melancholic verse and of a novel, Melky bes (1907; The Petty Demon ), about a sadistic, homicidal, paranoid schoolteacher. Three writers dominate the second wave of Symbolism. Eschatology and anthroposophy shaped the poetry and prose of Andrey Bely, whose novel Peterburg (1913–22; St. Petersburg ) is regarded as the masterpiece of Symbolist fiction. Aleksandr Blok, who wrote the lyric drama Balaganchik (1906; “The Showbooth”), is best known for his poem Dvenadtsat (1918; The Twelve ), which describes 12 brutal Red Guards who turn out to be unwittingly led by Jesus Christ. The principal theoretician of the Symbolist movement, Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949), wrote mythic poetry conveying a Neoplatonist philosophy. Acmeists and Futurists. In the second decade of the 20th century, Symbolism was challenged by two other schools, the Acmeists, who favoured clarity over metaphysical vagueness, and the brash Futurists, who wanted to throw all earlier and most contemporary poetry “from the steamship of modernity.” Among the Acmeists, Nikolay Gumilyov (1886–1921), who stressed poetic craftsmanship over the occult, was executed by the Bolsheviks. Already an accomplished creator of superb love lyrics in these years, Anna Akhmatova produced densely and brilliantly structured poems in the Soviet period, including Poema bez geroya (written 1940–62; A Poem Without a Hero ) and Rekviyem (written 1935–40; Requiem ), which was inspired by Soviet purges and was therefore unpublishable in Russia. From 1923 to 1940 she was forced into silence, and in 1946 Akhmatova and Zoshchenko became the target of official abuse by the Communist Party cultural spokesman Andrey Zhdanov (1896–1948). Some consider Osip Mandelshtam (1891–1938), who died in a Soviet prison camp, to be the greatest Russian poet of the 20th century. Many of his difficult, allusive poems were preserved by his wife, Nadezhda Mandelshtam (1899–1980), whose memoirs are themselves a classic. The two most important Futurist poets were Velimir Khlebnikov and Vladimir Mayakovsky. Khlebnikov hoped to find the laws of history through numerology and developed amazingly implausible theories about language and its origins. His verse, which is characterized by neologisms and “trans-sense” language, includes “Zaklyatiye smekhom” (1910; “Incantation by Laughter”) and Zangezi (1922). Mayakovsky epitomized the spirit of romantic bohemian radicalism. Humour, bravado, and self-pity characterize his inventive long poems, including Oblako v shtanakh (1915; A Cloud in Trousers ). After the Russian Revolution in 1917, which he ardently supported initially, Mayakovsky “stepped on the throat” of his song to produce propaganda poems. But he also satirized Soviet bureaucracy in the witty “Razgovor s fininspektorom o poezii” (1926; “Conversation with a Tax Collector about Poetry”). As a dramatist, he is best known for Vladimir Mayakovsky (1913), in which he played the lead role, and Klop (1929; The Bedbug ), in which a philistine, along with a bedbug, is resurrected into the banal communist future of 1979. Having written a poem about the suicide of the peasant poet Sergey Yesenin (1895–1925), Mayakovsky later shot himself, leaving a brilliantly ironic suicide note with a poem explaining that “love’s boat has smashed against daily life.” Others. Celebrated in their day, the fiction writers Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919), Aleksandr Kuprin (1870–1938), and Vladimir Korolenko (1853– 1921) now have faded reputations. But Ivan Bunin, who became the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1933), wrote superb works both before the Revolution and as an émigré after it. Especially noteworthy are his dark novella Derevnya (1910; The Village ), which is relentlessly critical of Russians, and his Zhizn Arsenyeva (1930; The Life of Arseniev, or The Well of Days ), a fictionalized autobiography. Maxim Gorky became the official founder of Socialist Realism. Western readers now appreciate his three-volume autobiography Detstvo (1913–14; My Childhood ), V lyudyakh (1915–16; In the World , or My Apprenticeship ), and Moi universitety (1923; My Universities ) and his Vospominaniya o Lve Nikolayeviche Tolstom (1919; Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy ). His highly tendentious novel Mat (1906; Mother ), a model for Socialist Realism, and many other works divide characters simplistically into two groups—progressive and virtuous or reactionary and vicious.