Faust en andere verhalen by Ivan Turgenev

The story of this love was sincerely but clumsily recorded in the notebook - Karatyeev, indeed, was not born a writer. Karatyeev while in Moscow had become enamoured of a young woman who at first returned his love later, however, she got to know a Bulgarian, fell in love with him and went away with him to Bulgaria, where he soon died. Looking through its pages, Turgenev later recorded, “I found roughly sketched out what afterwards formed the subject of On the Eve, though the story was not completed and broke off abruptly. It derived from a notebook given him by Vassili Karatyeev before leaving for service in the Crimean War, from which the young recruit was not to return.

Ī key contributing circumstance was that the central plot was not of Turgenev’s invention.

The novel’s structural weakness is noted by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which describes it as “an episodic work, further weakened by the shallow portrayal of its Bulgarian hero”. He was on the point of burning the manuscript until a friend dissuaded him. Turgenev himself had misgivings about On the Eve and these were strengthened by the adverse reaction of Countess Lambert, to whom he had promised to dedicate the novel. Following its long gestation, the book was written in a few months and first appeared in 1859 in the Moscow magazine The Russian Messenger, where it aroused interest but not universal approval. Turgenev had long meditated On the Eve, wishing to represent a new type of idealistic but self-sacrificing heroine whom he eventually embodied in Elena. Elena takes Insarov's body to the Balkans for burial and then vanishes. On the outbreak of war Insarov tries to return with Elena to Bulgaria, but dies in Venice. Insarov nearly dies from pneumonia and only partly recovers. In secretly marrying Insarov Elena disappoints her mother and enrages her father, who had hoped to marry her to a dull, self-satisfied functionary, Kurnatovski. But when Berzyenev's revolutionary Bulgarian friend, Dmitri Insarov, meets Elena, they fall in love.

On the eve of the Crimean War, Elena is pursued by a free-spirited sculptor (Pavel Shubin) and a serious-minded student (Andrei Berzyenev). The story revolves around Elena Stakhova, a girl with a hypochondriac mother and an idle father, a retired guards lieutenant with a mistress. It has elements of social comedy but fell foul of radical critics who advocated the need of more overt reform. On the Eve ( Russian: «Накануне», Nakanune) is the third novel by Russian writer Ivan Turgenev.

Faust en andere verhalen by Ivan Turgenev