A Desperate Character and Other Stories

By Turgenev, Ivan

Book Id: WPLBN0000623571
Format Type: PDF eBook:
File Size: 0.8 MB
Reproduction Date: 2005

Title:	A Desperate Character and Other Stories
Author:	Turgenev, Ivan
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Literature, Literature & thought, Writing.
Collections:	Classic Literature Collection, Blackmask Online Collection
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	Blackmask Online


Citation APA MLA Chicago Turgenev, B. I. (n.d.). A Desperate Character and Other Stories. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.cc/

Description
Excerpt: Although Pyetushkov shows us, by a certain open naivete of style, that a youthful hand is at work, it is the hand of a young master, carrying out the realism of the ?forties??that of Gogol, Balzac, and Dickens?straightway, with finer point, to find a perfect equilibrium free from any bias or caricature. The whole strength and essence of the realistic method has been developed in Pyetushkov to its just limits. The Russians are instinctive realists, and carry the warmth of life into their pages, which warmth the French seem to lose in clarifying their impressions and crystallising them in art. Pyetushkov is not exquisite: it is irresistible. Note how the reader is transported bodily into Pyetushkov?s stuffy room, and how the major fairly boils out of the two pages he lives in! (pp. 301, 302). That is realism if you like. A woman will see the point of Pyetushkov very quickly. Onisim and Vassilissa and the aunt walk and chatter around the stupid Pyetushkov, and glance at him significantly in a manner that reveals everything about these people?s world. All the servants who appear in the tales in this volume are hit off so marvellously that one sees the lower?class world, which is such a mystery to certain refined minds, has no secrets for Turgenev.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents: A Desperate Character and Other Stories, 1 -- Ivan Turgenev, 1 -- Introduction, 2 -- A DESPERATE CHARACTER, 4 -- I, 4 -- II, 6 -- III, 7 -- IV, 9 -- V, 11 -- VI, 13 -- VII, 15 -- A STRANGE STORY, 18 -- PUNIN AND BABURIN, 31 -- I. 1830, 32 -- II. 1837, 44 -- III. 1849, 61 -- IV. 1861, 67 -- OLD PORTRAITS, 68 -- THE BRIGADIER, 79 -- I, 79 -- II, 80 -- III, 80 -- IV, 81 -- V, 82 -- VI, 83 -- VII, 83 -- VIII, 84 -- IX, 85 -- X, 85 -- XI, 86 -- XII, 87 -- XIII, 88 -- XIV, 89 -- XV, 90 -- PYETUSHKOV, 92 -- I, 93 -- II, 95 -- III, 99 -- IV, 103 -- V, 105 -- VI, 110 -- VII, 116 -- VIII, 120 -- IX, 121 -- X, 124 -- XI, 129 -- A Desperate Character and Other Stories -- i