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    Smoke (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
    Unavailable
    Smoke (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
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    Smoke (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
    Ebook251 pages4 hours

    Smoke (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

    By Ivan Turgenev

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Published in 1867, Smoke contributed to Turgenev’s ongoing argument with the Slavophiles and was to trigger his heated political quarrel with Dostoyevsky about the deplorable state of Mother Russia.  Part love story, part political commentary, the novel tells of Litvinov, a quiet, ordinary young man, who travels to study European technology and scientific farming.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnes & Noble
    Release dateDec 12, 2011
    ISBN9781411464650
    Unavailable
    Smoke (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
    Author

    Ivan Turgenev

    Ivan Turgenev was a Russian writer whose work is exemplary of Russian Realism. A student of Hegel, Turgenev’s political views and writing were heavily influenced by the Age of Enlightenment. Among his most recognized works are the classic Fathers and Sons, A Sportsman’s Sketches, and A Month in the Country. Turgenev is today recognized for his artistic purity, which influenced writers such as Henry James and Joseph Conrad. Turgenev died in 1883, and is credited with returning Leo Tolstoy to writing as the result of his death-bed plea.

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    Reviews for Smoke (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

    3.5/5

    44 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      One of Turgenev's most perfect stories. Certainly there is nothing here that isn't unfamiliar to those who have read his works before. It's simply a romantic tale wonderfully told, which further demonstrates why Turgenev was the best "novelist" of the great 19th century Russian authors.
    • 5/5
      In 1867 wrote to his friend in exile, Herzen: 'Everybody curses me, the reds and the whites and from above and below and from the flanks.' Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky expressed their disapproval, on the grounds of political opinions, technical deficiencies, patriotism, etc. etc. It became so intense that the members of the exclusive English Club in Petersburg wanted to exclude the burly story-teller from their midst. Turgenev departed from his usual treatment of positive heroines, Irina is no help to the foundering Litvinov, she merely represents passion writ large. It is Tatyana who finally provides the nourishing soil Litvinov had been looking for.Love in this novel reigns supreme. The reality. When it fails all is dim at best. All the ideas, couplings, even the Mother Land herself.I've recently purchased V.S. Pritchett's biography of the 'Gentle Barbarian.' And looking forward to reading it.
    • 5/5
      This is the 10th work of fiction by Turgenev I’ve read, and while it’s not quite his very best (his masterpiece ‘Sketches From a Hunter’s Album’), it’s right up there with other great novels I’ve enjoyed of his (‘Spring Torrents’, ‘First Love’, and ‘Fathers and Sons’). Set in Baden-Baden, it centers on a love triangle between a young man and two women, one of whom is his trusting and virtuous fiancé, and the other a hypnotic beauty who left him years ago for a rich man. When she resurfaces with her husband in Baden while he awaits the arrival of his fiancé, things get complicated.Echoing themes of Turgenev’s own frustrated longing for Pauline Viardot, the novel also deals with weighty issues facing Russia at the time. Consistently lagging behind Europe and led by an aristocracy he saw as pretentious, bumbling and incompetent, Turgenev does not hold back in his criticisms of Russia through his characters. Written in the time period he would so famously meet Dostoevsky in Baden, it’s no wonder that the men would quarrel, with their drastically different personalities and Dostoevsky’s much deeper belief in the Russian people. Tugenev’s writing in ‘Smoke’ is brilliant. He creates fantastic character sketches with psychological insight, as well as makes the big moments in life even bigger by capturing little details. One that stands out is mentioning a butterfly fluttering and struggling against a window in one meeting between the lovers, as the man ponders his next move. Another is him seeing his love galloping off on horseback into the night, her dark veil fluttering in the wind, as her husband pursues her, yelling at her to slow down. Turgenev also sees the bigger picture, and the metaphor of smoke is powerful in the novel – both early on, as cigar smoke hazily drifts over a drawing room where Russians are blathering on without really saying anything, and then later, as train smoke whips past its car’s windows, undulating and swirling around, the protagonist sees the transience and futility of it all. The novel certainly didn’t win him any friends in Russia, and as he was already estranged from his country after ‘Fathers and Sons’ was published five years earlier, Turgenev began to write less, which is a shame. With its combination of passion, profound moments, and valid criticisms of Russia in the 1860’s, ‘Smoke’ would be a great one to start with for those new to Turgenev’s oeuvre.Quotes:On passion:“Practical people of Litvinov’s sort ought never to be carried away by passion, it destroys the very meaning of their lives…But natures cares nothing for logic, our human logic; she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge till we are crushed under its wheel.”On transience, sorry for the length of this one but I found it absolutely brilliant:“He fell to looking out of the window. It was gray and damp; there was no rain, but the fog still hung about; and low clouds trailed across the sky. The wind blew facing the train; whitish clouds of steam, some singly, others mingled with other darker clouds of smoke, whirled in endless file past the window at which Litvinov was sitting. He began to watch this steam, this smoke. Incessantly mounting, rising and falling, twisting and hooking on to the grass, to the bushes as though in sportive antics, lengthening out, and hiding away, clouds upon clouds flew by…they were forever changing and stayed still the same in their monotonous, hurrying, wearisome sport! Sometimes the wind changed, the line bent to the right or left, and suddenly the whole mass vanished, and at once reappeared at the opposite window; then again the huge tail was flung out, and again it veiled Litvinov’s view of the vast plain of the Rhine. He gazed and gazed, and a strange reverie came over him…He was alone in the compartment; there was no one to disturb him. ‘Smoke, smoke,’ he repeated several times; and suddenly it all seemed as smoke to him, everything, his own life, Russian life – everything human, especially everything Russian. All smoke and steam, he thought; all seems forever changing, on all sides new forms, phantoms flying after phantoms, while in reality it is all the same and same again; everything hurrying, flying towards something, and everything vanishing without a trace, attaining to nothing; another wind blows, and all is dashing in the opposite direction, and there again the same untiring, restless – and useless gambols!”