Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (????? ??????j???? ?????????, November 9, 1818, Orel, Russia - September 3, 1883, Bougival, near Paris, France ) was a major Russian novelist and playwright. Although his reputation has suffered some setbacks during the last century, the novel Fathers and Sons should still be regarded as one of the defining works of the 19th-century fiction.

Early life

Turgenev was born into an old and wealthy family at Orel, Russia, in the province of the same name, on October 28, 1818. His father Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev, the colonel of a cavalry regiment, died when he was sixteen years of age, leaving Ivan and his brother Nicholas to be brought up under the care of their emotional and abusive mother, Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova, who owned large estates and many serfs. It is reported that Varvara once smothered one of her serfs. Events such as these would have a profound impact on Turgenev's characterization of serfs in his work, and eventually, through Tsar Aleksandr II's reading of A Sportsmans's Sketches, lead to the freeing of the serfs by the Edict of Emancipation in 1861. After the normal schooling for a child of a gentleman's family, Ivan studied for a year at the University of Moscow, then at the University of St Petersburg focusing on the classics, Russian literature and philology. He was finally sent in 1838 to the University of Berlin to study philosophy (comprised mostly of Hegel) and history. Turgenev was generally impressed with the more modern society he witnessed in Western Europe, and he went back home a "Westernizer", as opposed to a "Slavophile", who believed that Russia could improve itself by imitating the West and abolishing outdated institutions such as serfdom.

Related Topics:
Orel - Russia - October 28 - 1818 - A Sportsmans's Sketches - University of Moscow - University of St Petersburg - The classics - Russian literature - Philology - University of Berlin - Philosophy - Hegel - History

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For his first acquaintance with the literature of his country the future novelist was indebted to one of the family's serfs, who read to him verses from the Rossiad of Kheraskov, a once celebrated poet of the eighteenth century. Turgenev's early attempts in literature, consisting of poems and sketches, had indications of genius and were favorably spoken of by Belinsky, then the leading Russian critic, for whom Turgenev ever cherished a warm regard.

Related Topics:
Kheraskov - Belinsky

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