On the Eve
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Product Description
Product Description
Turgenev is an author who no longer belongs to Russia only. During the last fifteen years of his life he won for himself the reading public, first in France, then in Germany and America, and finally in England. In his funeral oration the spokesman of the most artistic and critical of European nations, Ernest Renan, hailed him as one of the greatest writers of our times: "The Master, whose exquisite works have charmed our century, stand more than any other man as the incarnation of the whole race," because "a whole world lived in him and spoke through his mouth." Not the Russian world only, we may add, but the whole Slavonic world, to which it was "an honour to have been expressed by so great a Master."
As regards his method of dealing with his material and shaping it into mould, he stands even higher than as a pure creator. Tolstoy is more plastical, and certainly as deep and original and rich in creative power as Turgenev, and Dostoevsky is more intense, fervid, and dramatic. But as an artist, as master of the combination of details into a harmonious whole, as an architect of imaginative work, he surpasses all the prose writers of his country, and has but few equals among the great novelists of other lands.
To one familiar with all Turgenev's works it is evident that he possessed the keys of all human emotions, all human feelings, the highest and the lowest, the novel as well as the base.
But there was in him such a love of light, sunshine, and living human poetry, such an organic aversion for all that is ugly, or coarse and discordant, that he makes himself almost exclusively the poet of the gentler side of human nature.
We may say that the description of love is Turgenev's speciality.
About the Author
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born in 1818 in the province of Oryol. After the family had moved to Moscow in 1827 he entered St Petersburg University where he studied philosophy. When he was nineteen he published his first poems and went to the University of Berlin. After two years he returned to Russia and took his degree at the University of Moscow. After 1856 he lived mostly abroad, and he became the first Russian writer to gain a wide reputation in Europe. He wrote many novels, plays, short stories and novellas, of which First Love (1860) is the most famous. He died in Paris in 1883.
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First Sentence
On one of the hottest days of the summer of 1853, in the shade of a tall lime-tree on the bank of the river Moskva, not far from Kuntsovo, two young men were lying on the grass. Read the first page
Front Cover | Table of Contents | Excerpt
On one of the hottest days of the summer of 1853, in the shade of a tall lime-tree on the bank of the river Moskva, not far from Kuntsovo, two young men were lying on the grass. Read the first page
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Turgenev's third novel isn't his most satisfying, the author casting around his cast of characters to find a committed idealist and romantic hero to bring about social reform in his country, but 'on the eve of reform' he fails to find it in the Russian gentry of the time. Initially he examines the characters of Shubin, a talented sculptor, and Bersyenev, a scholar and academic, and, in a Turgenev way, he examines their character and commitment to a cause through their courting of Elena Stahov. In this both men are lacking, failing to show anything but surface attraction and devotion, but backing down when a rival for her affections gets in their way.
In On The Eve then, it's in the form of a Bulgarian revolutionary called Insarov that Turgenev finds the characteristics that he is seeking, but the romantic melodrama that follows isn't the strongest section of the novel, and it wouldn't be until the creation of in Bazarov in his subsequent masterpiece Fathers and Sons (Fathers and Children) that Turgenev successfully finds a Russian man of principles and a man of action. On The Eve however does have some good points - there's a great deal of humour, particularly coming from the character of Shubin, and some entertaining though evidently ineffectual philosophising from his Russian gentlemen. Primarily however, Turgenev's depiction of characters, particularly the fatalistic nature of Elena, is superb, with even secondary characters being fully fleshed-out, the author creating a credible dynamic between the differences in their temperament and outlook as well as in their generational and social divisions.
In On The Eve then, it's in the form of a Bulgarian revolutionary called Insarov that Turgenev finds the characteristics that he is seeking, but the romantic melodrama that follows isn't the strongest section of the novel, and it wouldn't be until the creation of in Bazarov in his subsequent masterpiece Fathers and Sons (Fathers and Children) that Turgenev successfully finds a Russian man of principles and a man of action. On The Eve however does have some good points - there's a great deal of humour, particularly coming from the character of Shubin, and some entertaining though evidently ineffectual philosophising from his Russian gentlemen. Primarily however, Turgenev's depiction of characters, particularly the fatalistic nature of Elena, is superb, with even secondary characters being fully fleshed-out, the author creating a credible dynamic between the differences in their temperament and outlook as well as in their generational and social divisions.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The version of this book with the plain cover is a reproduction of an old edition using optical character recognition rather than scanning. I do not feel that Amazon should sell it.
Apart from the dated translation - mentioned in another review - the quality of reproduction is poor; some words are garbled, phrases in French are garbled, sentences break in the middle etc.
If you want to read this book, I recommend you purchase the Penguin edition second hand which is far superior.
The technology used in reproducing out-of print-books may be ok for English-language texts but not for translations using non-english names and phrases.
Apart from the dated translation - mentioned in another review - the quality of reproduction is poor; some words are garbled, phrases in French are garbled, sentences break in the middle etc.
If you want to read this book, I recommend you purchase the Penguin edition second hand which is far superior.
The technology used in reproducing out-of print-books may be ok for English-language texts but not for translations using non-english names and phrases.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a famous classic, but I found it a hard read. The translation by Constance Garnett was written in 1895, and the English is a little heavy and unidiomatic by modern standards. I was not gripped by any of the characters in the story, particularly is it was hard to remember who they were. As in most Russian novels, the characters have three or four different names. This translation does list all the names at the start of the novel, but gives no hint as to who they are. This is confusing as there are two Stahovs, one of whom is the heroine's father and the other some sort of uncle. Most other translations add a brief description of the characters, which is helpful. But the typescript is a pleasure to read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
satisfactory
I am happy with the size of print and the fact that it is in bold which helps me read it. The wording of the book is very different from the penguin classics and as that is the... Read more
Published on 4 Aug 2009 by oleander white
On The Eve - A Font Too Far
I've always loved this book. The only comment I would make is that I couldn't get a smaller print size without a great deal of searching. Read more
Published on 29 Jan 2009 by Mrs. S. C. Bush
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