TURGENIEFF, IVAN SERGEYEVITCH (1818 83). A Russian novelist. He was born at Orel, the son of a wealthy nobleman. At home he learned German and French, besides some Eng lish, while a self-taught serf implanted in him a love for the Russian poets. Neglected by his parents, the boy made many friends among the peasants, and became a keen observer of their life. At fifteen he passed a brilliant entrance examina tion at the University of Moscow, and entered the University of Saint Petersburg a year later. Here he came to know Pushkin, Byelinski, and other literary lights. After graduating, he went to Berlin to complete his study of classical phil ology under Boeckh and Zumpt, of history under Ranke, and of philosophy under Werder. Ile returned to Saint Petersburg in 184I. His re lations with his mother, formerly strained, were now openly broken off on account of her treat ment of the serfs. He had to take service as a Government clerk, but soon gave up his position and set himself to write. His poem Parasha (1845) was heartily praised by Byelinski. But it was the great success of Kolosoff (1846) and /Thor and Kalinyteh (1847) that induced him to write the of a Sportsman (1847-51). These sketches, pervaded with the spirit of hu manity and a sincere love for the oppressed peas ants, became the favorite book of Alexander 11., then heir to the throne. When Turgenieff's mother (lied in 1850 he immediately liberated all the serfs belonging to the estate. Meanwhile, he had incurred the suspicion of the Govern ment by a sojourn abroad in 1848 and later; and in 1852, after the publication of an article, liberal in tone, on the death of Gogol, he was forbidden to leave his estate. After two years he was pardoned through the influence of powerful friends, and left Russia in 1855. The remainder of his life was spent abroad, mainly in Paris. in close friendship with the famous singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia and her family. Of his few visits to Russia, that in 1879, and especially that in 1880, when he was feted as no one else at the Pushkin festival, were the most memorable. In 1881 he visited Russia for the last time. He died at his Bougival villa, near Paris, in 1883, and was buried at Saint Petersburg in the Volk off Cemetery, the funeral procession exceeding anything of the kind previously witnessed in Russia.
The great fame of Turgenieff rests on his Takoff Pasynkoff (1855) ; Faust ( 1S56) ; :Ism( ( I858) ; Xobles' Vest or Liza (1859): On the Fre, or First Lore (1860), and Fathers and Sons (1862). The works of the preceding period
were devoted to pleading the cause of the serfs against their owners; in these later works, Tur genieff turned to the mental and moral bank ruptcy of the upper classes as resulting from a life of idleness amid hundreds of overworked serfs. Fathers and SOBS marks an important point in Turgenieff's career. Its hero, Bazaroff, a young student disdaining all but utilitarian science, was called by the author by the newly coined name nihilist, meaning 'a man who looks at everything from a critical point of view.' With one or two exceptions the radical critics savagely attacked what was considered a cari cature on the young generation. With the reac tionaries .Nihilism soon became equivalent to 're spect for nothing,' or 'political unreliability,' and this helped to widen still further the breach with the liberals. The animosity of Turgenieff's critics turned the melancholy manifest in his earlier works into pessimism, and his Smoke (1867) de picted the whole liberal movement of 'the sixties' as a mirage. Virgin Soil (187(i) pictured the `new' generation of `the seventies.' Here Tur genieff fully applied his favorite division of all people into two types, a classification proclaimed by him in the essay Hamlet and Don Quixote in 1860—Hamlet representing endless self-analy sis and skepticism; Don Quixote, enthusiastic devotion to the ideal. But Turgenieff, living abroad, could no longer be a faithful painter of the new social currents in Russian life. Clara /ffilitch (1883), in spite of its mystical effect, is a story of the real life of the great Russian singer and actress Kadmina, who ended life by suicide on the stage of Kharkoff. His Seni/ia, or Prose Poems (1883), are poetic gems in the most perfect prose.
Turgenieff, the lineal literary descendant of Pushkin, is the greatest prose-artist in the history of Russian letters. His figures do not stand out boldly against the background, but form an har monious organic part of the whole scheme, and as such impress one still more forcibly when the whole scheme is comprehended. The language of Turgenieff has been at one a model and source of despair for the young Russian writers. His influence on modern literature has been very great, and many young French writers consider themselves his pupils. The latest edition of his works appeared in 10 vols. (Saint Petersburg, 1891). An excellent English translation by Con stance Garnett appeared in 14 vols. (London, 1894-97), with short introductions to the novels.