Classics
2 total works
"In my opinion ...every love, happy as well as unhappy, is real disaster when you give yourself over to it entirely." This heart-felt sentiment expressed by Turgenev's unfortunate character, Rakitin, sums up the central predicament of this, Turgenev's most celebrated play, completed in 1850 during the period of his extensive travels abroad. Probably drawn from his experiences of frustration and unhappiness at the hands of the famous Pauline Viardot, "A Month in the Country" explores the complexities of that most universal of themes, the eternal love triangle, and transforms what could be termed an almost hackneyed subject into a brilliant tragi-comedy. With his fresh and subtle play of paradox and a new psychological penetration into character that anticipates the theatre of Chekhov, Turgenev creates a dramatic "month" which surely realizes Henry James' evaluation of the writer as "beautiful genius".
Turgenev's first major prose work is a series of twenty-five Sketches: the observations and anecdotes of the author during his travels through Russia satisfying his passion for hunting. His album is filled with moving insights into the lives of those he encounters - peasants and landowners, doctors and bailiffs, neglected wives and bereft mothers - each providing a glimpse of love, tragedy, courage and loss, and anticipating Turgenev's great later works such as First Love and Fathers and Sons. His depiction of the cruelty and arrogance of the ruling classes was considered subversive and led to his arrest and confinement to his estate, but these sketches opened the minds of contemporary readers to the plight of the peasantry and were even said to have led Tsar Alexander II to abolish serfdom.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.