Rudin
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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.' Rudin is the first of Turgenev's social novels, and is a sort of artistic introduction to those that follow, because it refers to the epoch anterior to that when the present social and political movements began. This epoch is being fast forgotten, and without his novel it would be difficult for us to fully realise it, but it is well worth studying, because we find in it the germ of future growths.
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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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Turgenev's first short novel takes place in a setting familiar from his dramas and indeed many of his later novels - a country house setting where a widowed society lady from St. Petersburg, Darya Mihailovna entertains local dignitaries and distinguished men of letters. Almost invariably, the setting is one where romance takes place, Turgenev thereby pitting the men against each other in ways that brings out their strength or lack of moral character.
In Rudin, it is Darya Mihailovna's daughter 17 year old Natalya who becomes the centre of the romantic entanglements that ensue when a new guest comes into the household, Dimitri Nikolaitch Rudin. Natalya is dazzled by the eloquence and wisdom of the man, who eclipses the empty pose, cynicism and 'bon mots' of the others, and Rudin comes to replace the rather dull and inarticulate Volintsev in her affections. Some of the men who have known Rudin in the past have doubts however about Rudin's strength of character and the conviction of his romantic intentions towards Natalya.
The majority of the novel then may seem rather lightweight, structured around a brief scarcely existent romance, featuring lots of ineffectual talking, discussion and gossip between society gentlemen on subjects of art, poetry, music, and romantic ideals - but the setting, the talk and the behaviour of the characters tells us rather more about the individuals than might be expected. Certainly, it's all very entertaining, and some wisdom is indeed dispensed amid much empty theorising and philosophising, but there appears to be no sincerity or willingness on the part of anyone to do anything but talk about it all.
Affairs of the heart are however Turgenev's speciality, and it is through their conduct with women that the author best manages to examine the essential character of Russian men. Not untypically - at least until he came to write his masterpiece Fathers and Sons - he finds something wanting in his leading men. In comparison to Volintsev, Lezhnyov, Pandalevsky and Pigasov, Rudin would appear to be an intellectual as well as a man of ideals and practicalities, but he proves - through his behaviour with Natalya - to be a man without conviction, sincerity, substance and more importantly a man without passion. As another reviewer here has commented, this isn't necessarily the fault of the young man, since like the others in this period before social reform, there is no outlet yet for his fine ideas.
All the same, while the subject is perfectly in keeping with Turgenev's usual themes, the ideas as they are expressed by the author in this slim novel are fairly lightweight and thin. Although there is some attempt here at using nature through meetings in gardens and allusions to branches on a oak tree as an expression of the inner lives of the characters, Turgenev would much more successfully bind his characters - of a greater variety of social classes moreover - with the very earth of Russia in his subsequent novel, Nest of the Gentry, and approach the reality of the underlying complexities of the dilemma faced by the individual in a progressive, modern world of social reform with a great deal more precision in Fathers and Sons.
In Rudin, it is Darya Mihailovna's daughter 17 year old Natalya who becomes the centre of the romantic entanglements that ensue when a new guest comes into the household, Dimitri Nikolaitch Rudin. Natalya is dazzled by the eloquence and wisdom of the man, who eclipses the empty pose, cynicism and 'bon mots' of the others, and Rudin comes to replace the rather dull and inarticulate Volintsev in her affections. Some of the men who have known Rudin in the past have doubts however about Rudin's strength of character and the conviction of his romantic intentions towards Natalya.
The majority of the novel then may seem rather lightweight, structured around a brief scarcely existent romance, featuring lots of ineffectual talking, discussion and gossip between society gentlemen on subjects of art, poetry, music, and romantic ideals - but the setting, the talk and the behaviour of the characters tells us rather more about the individuals than might be expected. Certainly, it's all very entertaining, and some wisdom is indeed dispensed amid much empty theorising and philosophising, but there appears to be no sincerity or willingness on the part of anyone to do anything but talk about it all.
Affairs of the heart are however Turgenev's speciality, and it is through their conduct with women that the author best manages to examine the essential character of Russian men. Not untypically - at least until he came to write his masterpiece Fathers and Sons - he finds something wanting in his leading men. In comparison to Volintsev, Lezhnyov, Pandalevsky and Pigasov, Rudin would appear to be an intellectual as well as a man of ideals and practicalities, but he proves - through his behaviour with Natalya - to be a man without conviction, sincerity, substance and more importantly a man without passion. As another reviewer here has commented, this isn't necessarily the fault of the young man, since like the others in this period before social reform, there is no outlet yet for his fine ideas.
All the same, while the subject is perfectly in keeping with Turgenev's usual themes, the ideas as they are expressed by the author in this slim novel are fairly lightweight and thin. Although there is some attempt here at using nature through meetings in gardens and allusions to branches on a oak tree as an expression of the inner lives of the characters, Turgenev would much more successfully bind his characters - of a greater variety of social classes moreover - with the very earth of Russia in his subsequent novel, Nest of the Gentry, and approach the reality of the underlying complexities of the dilemma faced by the individual in a progressive, modern world of social reform with a great deal more precision in Fathers and Sons.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Rudin is riddled with a multitude of personal problems which contribute much more to his downfall than the difficulties of his time. Whilst it is true that the snobbery of the Russian gentry and the repressiveness of tsarism stifled the freedom of the Russian intelligentsia, Rudin, unlike Lezhnev, lacks the personal fibre to overcome these restraints. Contrary to Richard Freeborn's assertion that the hero is simply an embodiment of "the men of the 1840s", Rudin is a fully-realised human being with a complex personality. As Eva Kagan-Kans has argued, Turgenev depicts an "individual character" by the "painting of a psychological portrait", whilst the social atmosphere of the time is of "secondary importance." Yet, at the same time, Rudin can be considered a universal figure, common to all epochs. Maurice Baring has referred to Rudin as being amongst Turgenev's "gallery of Hamlets." The man of talent, fond of ideas, but unable to enact them due to self-indulgence, hypocrisy and dependence on others is common to all societies - to modern-day Britain as much as to nineteenth-century Russia. Again, this discredits the view that Rudin is merely a reflection of the difficulties of his time. Only in Rudin's death-scene, which was added by Turgenev in 1860, do the hero's problems come directly into contact with the difficulties of his time. Even then, Rudin's efforts appear futile: his fellow-insurgents know neither his name nor his nationality.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I found Rudin profoundly touching and an almost astonishing work for a novel so slender. Rarely in so few pages can a writer have illustrated his themes so emphatically and so artfully. Throughout Turgenev uses nature as a proxy for narrative description and as a result the novel has a very calm and controlled feel. The characters are bound by their differing natures and their development is shadowed by changes in the natural environment they find themselves in.
More importantly, to my mind, however is the way in which the character of Rudin exposes the central contradiction between a desire for truth and a desire for love. By his nature, as we discover, Rudin is unable to conquer love but is however able to remain true to his ideals, despite being unable to act upon them. To this extent Rudin is impotent, he is clear about what he wishes to achieve - to become a man of action - yet he is fundamentally unable to achieve such a goal. As such he is destined to remain unhappy. However, unlike others, he perceives this and so is able to remain truthful to his self and thus in contrast to those other characters in the novel that are destined to remain unhappy, as he too is destined, he at least discovers and embraces his true self and as such realises the higher being in him. A higher being so often alluded to by others.
In such a fashion Turgenev exposes this central dialectic beautifully. By positing Rudin amidst a decaying social setting and allowing his seemingly constant passage of self-discovery inadvertently to fuel the self-discovery of those who come into contact with him, Turgenev demonstrates how a synthesis between self-knowledge and self-sacrifice is essential before true love can be sown within one's soul. Rudin, by being so lucid regarding what he loves (truth), whilst simultaneously illustrating to all the futility of his love, shines a light upon the ready attainability of the loves of other characters. Thus those characters who sought to see in Rudin something approaching an ideal are shocked and provoked into attaining their own, real, ideals. It is only those who refused to see in Rudin anything but impotence, coldness and bluster who emerge unchanged characters at the novel's conclusion.
As of Rudin himself, his love (truth) is attained only at the cost of discovering that he is less a mighty oak and more a shallow tumbleweed (Rudin himself goes from using the Oak as an analogy for his feelings to that of a tumbleweed by the end of the novel). Perhaps it is this inevitable conclusion to Rudin's long search, the same search that befalls all of us, that provokes Rudin (in the Epilogue) to finally attain his ideal as a man of action and thus ensure that, against the greatest odds, his seed was not, after all, sown upon barren ground.
More importantly, to my mind, however is the way in which the character of Rudin exposes the central contradiction between a desire for truth and a desire for love. By his nature, as we discover, Rudin is unable to conquer love but is however able to remain true to his ideals, despite being unable to act upon them. To this extent Rudin is impotent, he is clear about what he wishes to achieve - to become a man of action - yet he is fundamentally unable to achieve such a goal. As such he is destined to remain unhappy. However, unlike others, he perceives this and so is able to remain truthful to his self and thus in contrast to those other characters in the novel that are destined to remain unhappy, as he too is destined, he at least discovers and embraces his true self and as such realises the higher being in him. A higher being so often alluded to by others.
In such a fashion Turgenev exposes this central dialectic beautifully. By positing Rudin amidst a decaying social setting and allowing his seemingly constant passage of self-discovery inadvertently to fuel the self-discovery of those who come into contact with him, Turgenev demonstrates how a synthesis between self-knowledge and self-sacrifice is essential before true love can be sown within one's soul. Rudin, by being so lucid regarding what he loves (truth), whilst simultaneously illustrating to all the futility of his love, shines a light upon the ready attainability of the loves of other characters. Thus those characters who sought to see in Rudin something approaching an ideal are shocked and provoked into attaining their own, real, ideals. It is only those who refused to see in Rudin anything but impotence, coldness and bluster who emerge unchanged characters at the novel's conclusion.
As of Rudin himself, his love (truth) is attained only at the cost of discovering that he is less a mighty oak and more a shallow tumbleweed (Rudin himself goes from using the Oak as an analogy for his feelings to that of a tumbleweed by the end of the novel). Perhaps it is this inevitable conclusion to Rudin's long search, the same search that befalls all of us, that provokes Rudin (in the Epilogue) to finally attain his ideal as a man of action and thus ensure that, against the greatest odds, his seed was not, after all, sown upon barren ground.
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