Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev is a Russian author, who wrote a collection of short stories called A sportman's Sketches, as well as the infamous Fathers and Sons.
Ivan was born 9th November 1818 in Russia, and died september 3rd 1883 in France. His parents were Russian land-owners. He grew up with an abusive mother who had had a bad childhood and suffered in her marriage. His father died when he was 16 and he lived in constant fear of his mother. After standard schooling he went on to study Classics, Russian litterature, Philosophy and Philology. Turgenev was very much against serfdom, like many of his fellow educated young men.
He never married, however he had many affairs with his family's servants, one of them had his illigemate daughter, Paulinette. He had a life-long affair with the French opera singer Pauline Viardot, which was one of the reasons he lived in France for long periods of time.
Ivan had a rather strained realtionship with Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky for different reasons. They disliked Ivan's idealisation of Western Europe and the fact that Ivan didn't have religous motives in his written works. He was considered an agnostic. Tolstoy disliked Turgenev more than Dostoyevsky, and called his a bore. He even challenged Turgenev to a duel, but apologized afterwards. The rivalry ended eventually.
He wrote his most famous novel, Fathers and Sons in 1862, the novel is about the conflicts between the older, conservative generations and the nihilistic youth. The novel got bad reactions. This made Turgenev leave Russia in disappointment, which in turn made him lose most of his readers. After this Ivan reduced his writing, he wrote a few works after this but none of them were successful.
I've read Fathers and Sons because i wanted to understand nihilism, it was very well written and it helped me understand nihilism better than when reading articles about it. The story was also good, even though, just like Tolstoy's writing, it can become a bit dry and boring. Overral I think he's a great author, and i want more people to know about him, especially younger people who wouldn't know about his books since there isn't really any commercial for them.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Turgenev
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Ivan Turgenev is a Russian author, who wrote a collection of short stories called A sportman's Sketches, as well as the infamous Fathers and Sons.
Ivan was born 9th November 1818 in Russia, and died september 3rd 1883 in France. His parents were Russian land-owners. He grew up with an abusive mother who had had a bad childhood and suffered in her marriage. His father died when he was 16 and he lived in constant fear of his mother. After standard schooling he went on to study Classics, Russian litterature, Philosophy and Philology. Turgenev was very much against serfdom, like many of his fellow educated young men.
He never married, however he had many affairs with his family's servants, one of them had his illigemate daughter, Paulinette. He had a life-long affair with the French opera singer Pauline Viardot, which was one of the reasons he lived in France for long periods of time.
Ivan had a rather strained realtionship with Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky for different reasons. They disliked Ivan's idealisation of Western Europe and the fact that Ivan didn't have religous motives in his written works. He was considered an agnostic. Tolstoy disliked Turgenev more than Dostoyevsky, and called his a bore. He even challenged Turgenev to a duel, but apologized afterwards. The rivalry ended eventually.
He wrote his most famous novel, Fathers and Sons in 1862, the novel is about the conflicts between the older, conservative generations and the nihilistic youth. The novel got bad reactions. This made Turgenev leave Russia in disappointment, which in turn made him lose most of his readers. After this Ivan reduced his writing, he wrote a few works after this but none of them were successful.
I've read Fathers and Sons because i wanted to understand nihilism, it was very well written and it helped me understand nihilism better than when reading articles about it. The story was also good, even though, just like Tolstoy's writing, it can become a bit dry and boring. Overral I think he's a great author, and i want more people to know about him, especially younger people who wouldn't know about his books since there isn't really any commercial for them.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Turgenev
