A Sportsman’s Notebook summary

Preparations for Hunt by Evgraf Krendovsky (1836)
Picture source

I come back to Turgenev's own description of this book (which I quoted on the resources post):
"Much has come out pale and scrappy, much is only just hinted at, some of it's not -- right, oversalted or undercooked -- but there are other notes pitched exactly right and not out of tune, and it is these notes that will save the whole book."
Despite belonging to a different age and speaking out against a system that no longer exists, the simple beauty of Turgenev's prose (especially the pitch-perfect notes) makes it an enjoyable read today.


Ivan Turgenev online resources

Online resources for A Sportsman's Notebook

Discussions on the book:
One
Two
Three

The first paragraph of "Bezhin Meadow"

A quick look at Reading Turgenev by William Trevor and the so-called "Turgenev maiden"

A Sportsman’s Notebook discussion: three

A brief post on the last nine stories in (my version of) A Sportsman’s Notebook: “The Singers”, “Pyotr Petrovich Karataev”, “The Rendezvous”, “Prince Hamlet of Shchigrovo”, “Chertopkhanov and Nedopyuskin”, “The End of Chertopkhanov”, “The Live Relic”, “The Knocking”, and “Forest and Steppe”.

The text and other links related to A Sportsman’s Notebook can be found here. All quotes are from the translation by Charles and Natasha Hepburn.

This section of the sketches is probably the most diverse in subject material as well as quality. “The Singers” introduces the Russian “pot-house”, a place where drinks are sold, the setting in several of these stories. The emotion that the singing invokes, far from feeling artificial, resonates within the audience (including the narrator) and the reader. Heartache runs throughout the sketch, from the singers, their songs, the listeners, and the final cries of the peasant boys. Alcohol will play a larger (and more explicit) role in these stories. The saddest part of the story comes from the fleeting nature of the happiness realized by the singers and the audience as they temporarily escape the numerous oppressive forces bedeviling them.

Turgenev walks a fine line throughout these sketches—his subtlety yields sympathy. In contrast, more detail (at times) reduces the compassion for the characters. The maiden in “The Rendezvous”, alluring at first, becomes less attractive as she allows her beau to continually mistreat her in an overly melodramatic tale. On the other hand, minimal compassion for peasant characters can grow to admiration (or at least sympathy) after meeting their buffoonish landowners. The title character in “Pyotr Petrovich Karataev” provides a good example of this change in feeling, the narrator stating that acquaintance with “such creatures” as Pyotr (described initially as a scoundrel) afford “no sort of pleasure.” Yet by the end of the story it is difficult not to sympathize with him. The bittersweet recitation of passages from Hamlet at the end of the tale feels fitting for such a character.

There are many literary references in this last section. “Prince Hamlet of Shchigrovo” continues the Hamlet allusion, the title character embodying a self-awareness and loss of hope that Turgenev paints throughout many of his sketches. Turgenev’s 1860 speech contrasting such skepticism with idealism, “Hamlet and Don Quixote”, is anticipated throughout A Sportsman’s Notebook.

The longest tales (“Chertopkhanov and Nedopyuskin”, “The End of Chertopkhanov”) introduce characters that seem to be taken straight out of Gogol’s Dead Souls, displaying the same poshlost as the earlier work. The humor provided by these characters, loveable in spite of themselves, turns to pity as Chertopkhanov loves his lover, his friend, and (most importantly) his horse. The parodies in these two stories, as well as the beginning of “Prince Hamlet of Shchigrovo”, provide a comedy that is devastatingly effective in pricking the egos of the noble class.

“Forest and Steppe” is the final tale, a beautiful hymn to nature, although the privileged perspective tarnishes it somewhat for me. “The Live Relic”, instead, feels like a more natural end to the book (even though it was added well after the other stories). The narrator, stopping by a family estate, finds a previously beautiful servant (Lukeira) wasting away due to an unknown illness. The story feels forced at times, yet it is still effective. Lukeira’s beatific acceptance of her fate stands in sharp contrast to the resignation shown by many other characters in other stories. She continually looks for the positive, celebrating whatever she finds regardless of how insignificant. (As an aside, in a way her outlook mirrors the narrator’s/Turgenev’s view toward nature in “Forest and Steppe”.) Her willing submission to whatever will happen is a fitting conclusion to A Sportsman’s Notebook.

A Sportsman’s Notebook discussion: two

Landscape with Oaks by Alexey Savrasov (1850s)
Picture source

A brief post on the next nine stories in A Sportsman’s Notebook: “Bezhin Meadow”, “ Kasyan from Fair Springs”, “ The Bailiff”, “The Estate Office”, “The Bear", "Two Landowners”, “Lebedyan”, “Tatyana Borisovna and Her Nephew”, and “Death”.

The text and other links related to A Sportsman’s Notebook can be found here. All quotes are from the translation by Charles and Natasha Hepburn.

Turgenev’s wonderful outdoor descriptions continue in this section. I’ve already quoted the beginning of “Bezhin Meadow” in a previous post, while here is an example from “Kasyan from Fair Springs”:

It is a strangely enjoyable occupation to lie on one’s back in the forest and look upwards. You seem to be looking into a bottomless sea, extending far and wide beneath you; the trees seem not to rise from the ground, but, like the roots of huge plants, to drop perpendicularly down into those glass-clear waves, and the leaves on the trees are now translucent as emeralds, now opaque with a goldish, almost blackish, green. Somewhere far, far away, at the end of its slender twig, a single leaf stands motionless against a blue patch of pellucid sky, and beside it another one sways with a movement like the play of a fish on a line, a movement that seems spontaneous and not produced by the wind. Like fairy islands under the sea, round wide clouds float quietly up and quietly away—and suddenly the whole sea, the radiant air, the sun-drenched branches and leaves, all begin to ripple and tremble with a transitory brilliance, and there comes a fresh, thrilling murmur, like the interminable fait splashing that follow the rising of a sudden swell. You gaze without stirring, and no words can express the gladness and peace and sweetness that catch at your heart. You look—and that deep, clear azure calls to your lips a smile as innocent as itself; like the clouds in the sky, and as it were in company with them, happy memories pass before you in slow procession, and you feel your gaze passing farther and farther into the distance, drawing you after it into that peaceful, radiant gulf, and you have no power to tear yourself away from its height, from its depth…

Beyond nature and hunting, there is a lot more depth in descriptions of peasant life and the position of the serfs in this section. Turgenev’s success in these portrayals comes from downplaying an apparent agenda, passively (usually) narrating the action and describing what he sees. It has an effect similar to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, where factual and lyrical writing also provide a portrait that is both horrifying and beautiful.

“Bezhin Meadow” focuses on children letting their horses feed at night. They tell ghost stories and other supernatural events they have witnessed or have heard. There has been something uniformly sad about the adult peasant characters so far that is missing from these boys. Their talk and stories show a faith that anything is possible. The "real" world intrudes at the end of the story with the death of one of the boys. There is something innocent in their belief in the supernatural, which seems to be shared by many of the adult peasants as well. Supernatural things are all around…things that cannot be controlled. It is a mindset that bleeds over into other areas, surrendering to fate and lack of control. The ultimate fate comes from the ever-impending possibility of death. The character who dies shortly after the events in the story says “You can’t escape your fate.” Always present death is the subject of the final story in this group, “Death”. The narrator muses that “Death takes the Russian strangely” while describing the end of several peasants. In most cases, their mind focuses on what must done to insure their death does not disrupt their family.

Kasyan, the title character in the next story, provides the most interesting character study so far in these tales. A dwarf with speech “not that of a peasant”, Kasyan displays convoluted but deeply felt principles. While describing how he and other peasants have been treated like property after their master’s death, he demonstrates how important he believes education to be—a recurring sub-theme within the sketches. He simultaneously rejects and embraces fatalism while distancing himself when possible from the upper classes. He shows both interest and apathy toward other peasants, but his tenderness emerges for those he feels responsibility towards--the animals of the forest have as much claim for his concern as does his ward. In addition, he is the one character so far that has had no concern for money.

“The Bailiff” and “The Bear” are thoroughly depressing stories and take the reader deeper into a system stacked against the peasant. In “The Bailiff”, the young landowner says of his serfs “One must treat them like children.” In dealing with them, he admits, you have to take into account their illiteracy, yet he does nothing to educate them. Content that money comes in as scheduled from his administrator (the ‘bailiff’), he shows no curiosity into his peasants’ status, willfully blind to their enslavement by the bailiff. “The Bear” highlights not just the poverty of the peasant (“I looked round and my heart sank within me: visiting a peasant’s cabin at night is cheerless indeed”) but also how the system pits peasants against each other. In contrast to many peasants shown so far, the forester (with the nickname of “the bear”) feels a duty to do his best for his master which causes him to be harsh toward other serfs. Here the narrator intrudes, pleading directly to the forester (and one gets the feeling toward the reader as well) for mercy.

“Two Landowners” and “The Estate Office” continue direct criticism of the serf system. Class distinction and money always matter, defining a person and how they are treated regardless of how deserving they are. “The Estate Office” provides another example of the narrator, once he mentions he will pay for some service, receiving instantly improved service. The merchant class receives more attention in this story, as well as the graft involved by agents of an estate. While social hierarchy is a constant focus, one example here highlights the unreal features: one character acts superior to other serfs because he is “the son of some aristocrat of the servant world.” The control a landowner has over their serfs extends to allowing or forbidding marriage, and even resolving the competition between two suitors (in this case, by relocating the servant girl that received their attention).

So what is a serf to do? Turgenev doesn’t provide any answers in these sketches, other than the call for mercy at the end of “The Bear”. The surreal nature of the system appears so convoluted and counterproductive that simple fixes aren’t available. The landed class comes off as generally ignorant and self-absorbed, yet I’ve mentioned that Turgenev seems to subtly show that complicity by the serfs with the system only makes matters worse. Yet he also shows how the system is stacked against any improvement of their lot. It’s possible that the readers of Turgenev’s felt he was describing a different world than they had encountered—as different for them as it is for me reading this 150+ years after its writing. Religion is rarely mentioned other than deferral to God in the same manner as to their master. As I have highlighted before, education is an implied improvement even though that only addresses part of the problem.

There is one avenue for escape mentioned. The problem with alcohol, hurled as accusations up to this point (to explain poor performance), receives one of the more biting comments from Turgenev in “Lebedyan” (although the subject is a noble): “He is a fair drinker, too…but in Mother Russia it is hard to achieve distinction on that score… .”

A beautiful July day

There is July, and then there is Turgenev's July. Here is the wonderful and magical first paragraph of "Bezhin Meadow" (translation by Charles and Natasha Hepburn):

It was a beautiful July day, one of those days which come only after long spells of settled weather. From the earliest morning the sky is clear; the dawn does not blaze and flame, but spreads out in a gentle blush. Instead of the flaming incandescence that goes with sultriness and drought, or the dark crimson that precedes the storm, the sun has a bright and friendly radiance, as it swims peacefully up from behind a long, narrow cloud, shines out briskly, and then veils itself in the lilac-coloured mist. The tenuous upper edge of the spreading cloud sparkles with a serpentine brilliance, like that of beaten silver. But now the dancing beams come shooting out again—and gaily, grandly, as if on wings, the mighty luminary emerges. About midday there usually appears a multitude of high, round clouds, golden-grey, with edges of tender white. Like islands, scattered across a boundless and brimming river, which surrounds them with deep, translucent expanses of an even blueness, they scarcely stir; farther off, towards the horizon, they concentrate, crowd together, there is no more blueness to be seen between them; but the clouds themselves are of the same azure as the heaven, they are penetrated through and through with light and warmth. The colour of the horizon, a pale and floating lilac colour, remains unchanged the whole day, and uniform all around; there is no darkening or deepening to foretell a storm; sometimes, here and there, there are bluish shafts falling down, betokening the passage of a hardly perceptible shower. Toward evening, these clouds vanish; the last of them, blackish and vague as smoke, lie with a pink curling face turned to the setting sun; over the place where it disappears, as quietly as it rose into the heavens, a scarlet radiance stands for a while over the darkening earth, and, trembling gently, like a carefully carried taper, the evening star begins to burn. On such days, all colours are softened; they are clear, but not brilliant; they are tinged with a gentleness that is somehow touching. Such days may be scorching-hot, and the steam may rise from the sloping fields; but the wind disperses and breaks up the accumulated sultriness, and whirlwinds—sure sign of settled weather—march in tall white pillars along the tracks across the plough-land. In the dry, clean air there is a smell of wormwood, of rye-harvest, and of buckwheat; even an hour before nightfall you feel no dampness. This is the weather that the husbandman needs to gather in his crop… .

A Sportsman’s Notebook discussion: one

The Overgrown Pond by Valentin Serov (1888)
Picture source

A brief discussion covering the first seven of the “sketches”: Khor and Kalinich, Ermolai and the Miller’s Wife, Raspberry Water, The Country Doctor, My Neighbor Radilov, Ovsyanikov the Freeholder, Lgov.

The text and other links related to A Sportsman’s Notebook can be found here. All quotes are from the translation by Charles and Natasha Hepburn.

While the underlying assumption of these stories is rather flimsy—the author’s experiences during hunting in the countryside—it is effective in painting rural Russian life and nature. I’ll highlight a few points running through these stories that I found interesting. “Khor and Kalinich” is the strongest story in this group. The story continually shows contrasts and comparisons between many different groups of people as well as individuals. Some of the contrasts are between the provinces of Orel and Kaluga, the peasants within those districts, nature in those districts, the peasants Khor and Kalinich, serf vs. master, men and women, as well as others. Power and control, as well as the question of freedom are addressed many times. Khor, described as a “positive, practical fellow, … a rationalist” has the following conversation with the narrator:

”Tell me, Khor,” I said to him, “why don’t you buy your freedom from the master?”

“And why should I buy it? As things are, I know the master and I know the rent he wants… .He is a good master, too.”

“All the same, you would be better off if you were free,” I remarked.

Khor gave me a sidelong glance. “Certainly,” he said.

“Well, then, why don’t you buy your freedom?”

Khor swiveled his head from side to side. “And what am I to buy it with, sir?” [He is rumored to have money squirreled away]

“Oh, come on, man… .”

“Once Khor gets in among people who are free,” he continued below his breath, as if talking to himself, “any fellow who shaves his beard would be Khor’s master.”

“But you could shave your own beard, too.”

“What’s a beard? A beard is grass; you can always cut it.”

The following quote appears on many sites discussing Turgenev and this work: “He won his first success in 1847 with "Khor and Kalinich," a sympathetic story of peasant life, which was published later, with similar stories, in A Sportsman's Sketches (1852).” (See Yahoo Encyclopedia for one place this appears, although the information comes from The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press). Yet I find the tone of “Khor and Kalinich” not consistently sympathetic, bordering on damning some of the peasants at times. Khor is relatively well off for a serf, yet he prefers the appearance of control instead of actual freedom. Khor points out how the master abuses Kalinich (and seems more upset by Kalinich’s indifference than to the poor treatment), yet Khor is happy to stay in a position of authority relative to other peasants and keep the system unchanged.

The question of freedom is a thorny one, but so far Turgenev seems to show two underlying things needed for liberty: an inner drive or desire for it as well as education. Kalinich is able to read and knows how to accomplish many things, but has absolutely no drive to change his status. While Khor cannot read, he demonstrates “wide knowledge” and is shrewd. Yet he is complicit in maintaining the serf system since he will retain his relatively privileged status. Instead of a simple “peasants good, gentry bad” formula, Turgenev layers his criticism, sparing no class of people. While he clearly targets nobles who wish to keep the serfs in their place (which includes denying them an education), he does not seem to have much sympathy for the serfs that have an opportunity to improve their lot but would rather moan about the cruelty of fate (like Khor and Kalinich). While sympathetic in listening to “the shrewd simple speech of the Russian peasant” from Khor and others, their portrayal stands in marked contrast to peasants like Feodosya Mikhailovna (in “Ovsyanikov the Freeholder”) who worked hard to achieve her freedom, only to be forced to wait for her master to approve her release.

For structure, Turgenev usually begins with a “while I was hunting for x around the region of y” narrative, using this premise to provide lush depictions of the Russian countryside before introducing the peasants and or landowners he wants to portray. I enjoy his descriptions and can easily picture the scene and the people (and even the animals). Several times his structure sets the story up in this manner, flashes back on a character’s life to provide irony or pathos about their current situation, and then quickly ends the story. Rarely do these stories go anywhere or have much action. The passive narrator draws stories out of his characters, providing something more than just a slice of life. This mosaic approach, depicting individual details to provide an overall effect, works well with his depiction of an uncertain and decaying time.

The nostalgia is especially strong in “Raspberry Water”, “My Neighbour Radilov”, and “Ovsyanikov the Freeholder”. The characters discuss the situation of their current time versus that of prior years. Descriptions of places often show run-down or ruined structures while portrayals of peasants highlights their precarious situation, uncertain of where tomorrow’s food will come from. Even the landowners are far from being well off or secure. There is a sense that people, especially nobles, were grander, fairer and wiser in the past. But not everyone agrees. Luka Petrovich, in “Ovsyahikov the Freeholder” describes his mixed feelings: “No, I have no special reason for praising the good old days. Now take yourself, for example. You’re a landowner to-day, as your late grandfather was, but you’ve nothing like the same power, and you’re not the same sort of man, either.” One more example, from “Raspberry Water” where the narrator is chatting with Styopushka (a serf “they hardly bothered to count” when the census was taken) as they fish:

”You had a strict master, I see,” I began, after a few moments of silence.

“That was the fashion then, sir,” rejoined the old man, shaking his head.

“Things are different now,” I observed, looking at him keenly. He gave me a sidelong glance.

“No doubt things are better now,” he muttered, and cast his line far out into the stream.

Somehow I have trouble believing he really means that. With the false (or at least questionable) nostalgia and the poor conditions of the current day, it becomes somewhat understandable why the serfs may not uniformly want to be freed. They may view it as easier to be ill-treated but have excuses for your poor lot than to face uncertainty in troubling times on your own.

For some that are granted their freedom, like Vladimir in “Lgov” who subsists “on manna from on high”, the question arises if they are truly better off. The peasants are often viewed as something less than human by many of the landowners (who are rarely better educated). While there are beneficent landowners portrayed in these stories, they are the exception. More often the owners appear to believe the peasants exist to serve their whims, as well as feelingthe serfs are lucky to have such magnanimous owners.

A Sportsman’s Notebook discussion: online resources and versions

A Sportsman's Notebook by Ivan Turgenev
Translated by Charles and Natasha Hepburn
The Cresset Press, London, 1950

I am glad that this book has come out; it seems to me that it will remain my mite cast into the treasure chest of Russian literature, to use the phraseology of the school-book… Much has come out pale and scrappy, much is only just hinted at, some of it's not -- right, oversalted or undercooked -- but there are other notes pitched exactly right and not out of tune, and it is these notes that will save the whole book.

-- Ivan Turgenev, in a letter to his friend Pavel Annenkov in 1852, remarking on A Sportsman's Notebook
Quote source

Because of differences in translations, I thought it might be helpful to list which stories are in my version. I picked up the used copy pictured above (I know, I need to figure out how to use my camera phone better). I can’t really explain why I went with this version other than I liked the look and loved the feel of it over other versions. I know it’s all the wrong reasons, but I have seen only a few translations recommended and this was one. I’m not sure the best way to go about discussing the book, so I’ll probably only highlight certain stories and have a post on general topics.

Also, be sure to keep checking the main Turgenev online resource page. I add interesting articles as I find them.

Online texts

Most online texts seem to only have some of the stories available. Project Gutenberg looks like they have a complete version: Volume One and Volume Two

The work at Turgenev.org.ru is also the Constance Garnett translation, but has "translation corrected and names modernized by James Rusk"

A pdf version is available at Mootnotes

Eldritch Press has many works of Turgenev available in translation

Additional links about A Sportsman’s Notebook

The biggest hurdle to finding online links to this work is the various translations of the title. As I find more links that look like a good resource, I will continue to add them here.

The Wikipedia entry contains an overview of each story.

The quote at the start of this post was taken from this link, what looks to be the introduction to the 1967 Penguin Books edition. It was found on a syllabus page of Kathleen Ahern, Ph.D., at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

A review from TIME magazine in 1950 marking the translation I am reading. Quote:
"[Sherwood] Anderson once called A Sportsman's Notebook the sweetest thing in all literature.'"

Although it has nothing to do with Turgenev's story other than having the title of one tale, Sergei Eisenstein's film Bezhin Meadow has an interesting history.


The contents of the Hepburns’ translated version I am reading:

• Khor and Kalinich
• Ermolai and the Miller’s Wife
• Raspberry Water
• The Country Doctor
• My Neighbor Radilov
• Ovsyankkov the Freeholder
• Lgov
• Bezhin Meadow
• Kasyan from Fair Springs
• The Bailiff
• The Estate Office
• The Bear
• Two Landowners
• Lebedyan
• Tatyana Borisovna and Her Nephew
• Death
• The Singers
• Pyotr Petrovich Karataev
• The Rendezvous
• Prince Hamlet of Shchigrovo
• Chertopkhanov and Nedopyuskin
• The End of Chertopkhanov
• The Live Relic
• The Knocking
• Forest and Steppe