Life Issues Raised in Turgenev's Novels

In spite of the fact that Turgenev stated "Mumu," a noteworthy presentation of the savageries of serfdom, while confined in St. Petersburg, his work was developing toward such expanded character studies as Yakov Pasynkov (1855) and the subtle yet critical examinations of the oppositeness of love found in "Faust" and "A Correspondence" (1856).

Themes of Life Explored in Turgenev's Novels

Time and national events, additionally, 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 imbued with a spirit of nostalgic amusement for the shortcomings and futilities so apparent in this era of ten years earlier. According to Terras (1998), these works reflect a deep understanding of the societal changes occurring in Russia at the time.

Character and Cultural Analysis in Rudin and Home of the Gentry

The first of Turgenev's novels, Rudin, recounts an expressive intellectual, Dmitry Rudin, a character modeled partly on Bakunin, whose power of speech 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. However, when she challenges him to fulfill his words, he fails her. The evocation of the world of the Russian country house and of the summer weather that form the backdrop to the tragicomedy of this relationship is evidence of Turgenev's power of seeing and recording the constancies of the natural scene (Figes, 2002). The broader implications about Russian culture as a whole and about the role of the Russian intellectual elite are present as shading at the edges of the picture rather than as colors or details in the foreground.

Exploring the Influence of the West in Turgenev's Work

Turgenev's second novel, Home of the Gentry, is an elegiac exploration of unrequited love in which the hero, Lavretsky, is not so much weak as the victim of his uneven upbringing. The work is notable for the delicacy of the romantic sentiment; though it is somewhat garish at times. More important in terms of the author's thinking is the detailed biography of the hero. The suggestion is that the influence of the West has hampered 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 (Terras, 1998). Turgenev's objectivity as a chronicler of the Russian intellectual elite is evident in these early books. 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 tried to portray the positive aspirations of these young men and women with conscientious honesty.

Depicting Generational Conflict: Fathers and Sons

Turgenev's greatest novel, Fathers and Sons (1862), emerged from this sense of involvement and yet succeeded in representing, with striking balance and significance, the issues that divided the generations. The hero, Bazarov, is the most potent of Turgenev's creations. A nihilist, denying all laws except those of the natural sciences, classless and candid in his opinions, he is nonetheless vulnerable to love and by that token doomed to misery. In sociopolitical terms, he represents the triumph of the non-gentry revolutionary intellectuals over the aristocratic intellectual elite to which Turgenev belonged (Berlin, 1978). In artistic terms, he is a successful example of objective portrayal, and in the dignity of his death, he approaches tragic stature.

Conclusion: Turgenev's Literary Legacy

On the off chance that 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 ought not to provide answers to life's question marks. He constructed his books according to a simple formula that had the sole purpose of illuminating the character and dilemma of a single figure, whether hero or heroine. They are significant mainly as detailed and deft socio-psychological portraits. A major device of the novels is the examination of the impact of a newcomer's arrival upon a small circle of friends. The circle, in turn, subjects the newcomer to scrutiny through the relationship 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 conclusion of the relationship is always catastrophic (Terras, 1998).

Berlin, I. (1978). Russian Thinkers. Penguin Books.

Figes, O. (2002). Natascha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. Henry Holt and Company.

Terras, V. (1998). A History of Russian Literature. Yale University Press.