“Smoke” by Ivan Turgenev (translated by Donald Rayfield)

This short novel by Turgenev takes place almost entirely amongst the large Russian community taking in the waters, the mountains, and the casinos in Baden Baden. “If a dozen Russians get together, the very first question to arise—as you’ve been able to see today—will be the meaning, the future of Russia, all in generalizations, from Leda and the Swan onward, with no evidence or conclusions. They keep chewing over this miserable question like children with a mouthful of rubber: no juice, no point. And of course, that means the rotten West will get a kicking. Some parable, you might think! The West beats us on all counts, but it’s rotten! It wouldn’t be so bad… if we really did despise it, but it’s all hot air and lies. We certainly curse it, but the only thing we value is its opinion, I mean the opinion of Parisian morons.”

The theme of Russia’s place in Europe recurs often amongst this affluent Russian set, “I’m a Westernizer, I’m devoted to Europe, or to be precise, I’m devoted to an educated culture, which we Russians make such gentle fun of nowadays, to civilization—yes, yes, that’s the right word for it—and I love it with all my heart, I believe in it, and I have no other faith, and am not going to change…. All the other terms—national character, or glory—have a smell of blood about them. To hell with them!… Yes sir, I both love and hate my Russia, my strange, dear, nasty, precious motherland.” Class is another recurring motif in the novel, “Litvinov felt more and more uncomfortable. His pride, his decent plebeian pride, was making him feel indignant. What did he, the son of a minor civil servant, have in common with them, these Petersburg military aristocrats? He loved everything they hated; he hated everything they loved—of that he was only too clearly aware, he could feel it with his entire being.”

The entire plot of the novel centers around Litvinov and a past love, who after a decade apart, reenters his life just when he is about to be married, “Litvinov tried to expel Irina’s image from his head, but he had no success. That was the reason that he hadn’t even remembered about his fiancée; he felt that today Irina’s image would not give way. He proposed, without worrying any more, to wait for this entire “strange story” to reach a conclusion. That conclusion could not be far off, and Litvinov had no doubt at all that it would be a wholly innocuous and natural one.” However, the story proceeds as expected to all except Litvinov, perhaps, “That night Litvinov didn’t sleep at all, and didn’t even undress. He was very distressed. Being honest and fair-minded, he could understand the importance of obligations, the sacrosanct nature of duty, and he would have found it shameful to try to be evasive, given his weakness and his misconduct. At first, he was overcome by numb consternation, and it took him a long time to shed this constant half-conscious, dark, oppressive, and confused feeling. Then he was overwhelmed by horror at the thought that his future, which he had with great effort virtually assured, his future was once more enveloped in darkness. He was horrified at the thought that the solid house which he had only just erected had suddenly collapsed…. Positive people, like Litvinov, should not let themselves be carried away by passion, for it unhinges the very meaning of their life. But nature can’t handle logic, our human logic; it has its own, which we can’t understand and won’t recognize until it runs over us like a carriage wheel.”

“Fathers and Sons” by Ivan Turgenev

Turgenev’s novel takes place in the landscape of 19th century Russia, a place and time undergoing rapid change as enlightenment ideas flowed eastward from Europe and gradually began to affect the Russian landed gentry and intelligentsia  This novel is largely about the generational divide in these changing times. It was a time when the young were exerting themselves and the old felt their time had come and gone. New scientific and political ideas ruled the day. The serfs were now free and were paying rent on their newly granted lands. Masters bent over backwards to think of themselves as liberal and servants walked about with an air of self respect bordering on haughtiness. However, this novel is about even more than all of that. It turns on the universal nature of man, his eternal needs, the meaning of life, and on love itself. Turgenev was himself pulled in competing directions- not liberal enough for the reformers and dangerously free thinking for the conservative establishment. He sometimes tried to have it both ways, but firmly considered himself an enlightened mind. Belinsky was his mentor, friend, and inspiration. This novel successfully depicts the changing times in Russia, while doing credit to both the old guard and the new fashions of thinking, just like the author himself.

“On the Eve” by Ivan Turgenev (translated by Michael Pursglove)

In this nineteenth century Russian novel, a young lady, Yelena, is pursued by no more than three suitors. “From the age of sixteen she became completely independent; she began to live her own life, but it was a solitary life. Her soul both blazed up and died down in solitude; she thrashed about like a bird in a cage, but there was no cage: no one was constraining her, no one was holding her back, but she struggled and exhausted herself.” Yelena ends up falling for a mysterious Bulgarian noble, Insarov, expelled from his homeland in his youth by the Ottomans on pain of death. He is living in exile in Moscow, a poor university student, helping to raise arms for the independence movement. “I’m sure you will come to love us: you love all oppressed people. If you knew how bountiful our land is! Meanwhile it is being trampled, torn apart…. We’ve been robbed of everything: our churches, our rights, our lands. The filthy Turks drive us like cattle and slaughter us.” Yelena cannot help but fall in love. She writes in her diary, “The time will come when he’ll leave us forever, will go home, will go there, beyond the sea. So? Good luck to him! But all the same I’ll be glad that I got to know him while he was here. Why is he not a Russian? No, he couldn’t be a Russian.” His rival suitors bow out to Insarov in typical Russian fashion, “We’re not blind, we see what’s going on around us, but we’re gentlemen, my dear sir, and we take revenge in a gentlemanly manner.”