Sunday, June 21, 2009

Ivan Turgenev online resources

Portrait of Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev
By Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1879)
Picture source

A few links on Turgenev. I'll link to individual works as I cover them.

BIOGRAPHY
Wikipedia entry

Biography at Pegasos

Good background information on Turgenev and his time is provided by Dr. Bruce T. Holl (Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas)

ONLINE WORKS
Most online works use translations by Constance Garnett
Works at Google Books
Project Gutenberg, or
Mootnotes.

Audio works available at LibriVox

ADDITIONAL
John MacKail's Overview of the Golden and Silver Ages of Russian Culture provides a general overview of the times and where Turgenev fits (found on the site of Nicholas C. J. Pappas, Professor of History at Sam Houston State University)

Music plays an important role in Turgenev’s life and works. This site provides Turgenev’s thoughts on Russian music as well as audio of works he specifically mentions.
An additional site on Turgenev and Russian Music provides pictures of Turgenev and Russian composers of his time.

Kelley Dupuis' essay regarding the influence of Turgenev on Ernest Hemingway

I didn’t know essays were available at Wikipedia, but this one is from Essays on Russian Novelists by William Lyon Phelps

Two essays by Henry James on Turgenev:
1897 entry in Library of the World's Best Literature
1903 essay

A letter by Joseph Conrad on Turgenev and a study to be published by Edward Garnett:

"For only think! Every gift has been heaped on his cradle: absolute sanity and the deepest sensibility, the clearest vision and the quickest responsiveness, penetrating insight and unfailing generosity of judgment, an exquisite perception of the visible world and an unerring instinct for the significant, for the essential in the life of men and women, the clearest mind, the warmest heart, the largest sympathy--and all that in perfect measure. There's enough there to ruin the prospects of any writer."

Turgenev.org.ru, which has photos/paintings along with a biography and his works (in English and Russina)

An essay on Willa Cather, Ivan Turgenev, and the Novel of Character by Richard Harris from the Willa Cather Archive at the University of Nebraska

Courtesy of Richard Peace, Professor Emeritus, University of Bristol comes The Novels of Turgenev: Symbols and Emblems

One of my favorite current writers, the pseudonymous Theodore Dalrymple, has an article titled How—-and How Not—-to Love Mankind, a look at Turgenev and Karl Marx:
"But for all their similarities of education and experience, the quality of each man’s compassion could not have been more different: for while one’s, rooted in the suffering of individuals, was real, the other’s, abstract and general, was not."

Dale Quarrington's look at the relationship between Turgenev and Dostoevsky

2 comments:

LauraBeth said...

Thank you for the links you've provided here. I look forward to exploring them. I happened to come across your page while looking for Joseph Conrad's essay on Turgenev. Do you have any suggestions as to where I might find this? Ty!

Dwight said...

LauraBeth, I'm not sure where you might find a copy of it online. JSTOR is a possibility. I'd recommend making use of a librarian for that. And I'd love to add a link here if you find one! Best of luck on that...I hope you can find it!