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Varvara Petrovna Turgeneva in Unpublished Letters to Her Son Ivan (1838-1844)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
Extract
On the eve of World War I the St. Petersburg Public Library acquired, from an anonymous donor, 124 letters from V. P. Turgeneva to her son, Ivan Sergeevich, written from 1838 to 1844. His side of the correspondence is not extant, but his youthful personality is often vividly evoked by his mother’s words, and his letters are reflected and occasionally quoted in hers. These letters from the hand of V. P. would comprise, an archivist once observed, a thick book.1 During the era they represent, I. S. (“Milyi drug i syn, Vanichka,” somewhat more frequently “Mon cher Jean”) entered Berlin University to study philosophy, traveled in Europe, published twenty short poems and the comic verse narrative Parasha, met Vissarion Belinskii and became his friend, began his lifelong friendship with the Viardots, was first stricken with gallstones and other complaints, published his first story (already mature and polished, “Andrei Kolosov“), and wrote part of a work of fiction now seen as a key to his creativity (“Perepiska,” published in 1856).
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References
Aspects of this paper were presented at Harvard University and Dartmouth College (1978), the Midwest Slavic Conference (Chicago, 1982), the Turgenev Centennial Symposium at the University of Calgary (1983), the University of Southern California (1995), and at the University of California, Berkeley (1997). The author thanks Barbara Heldt, Barry P. Scherr, G. S. Smith, and Richard S. Wortman for comments on early drafts, and Marianna Tax Choldin for expert assistance in obtaining materials discussed here, the study of which was facilitated by a grant from the University of Oregon (1994).
Epigraph: “We've hired two professional hunters. One is from the village of Kromy, the other—the one from last year—we're going to buy for you.”
1 Ukhmylova, T. K., Kratkii otchet rukopisnogo otdela za 1914-1938 gg.(Leningrad, 1940)Google Scholar; Zaborova, R. B., Rukopisi I. S. Turgeneva: Opisanie(Leningrad, 1953)Google Scholar; Khmelevskaia, E. M., “Utrachennye pis'ma I. S. Turgeneva (1838-1856),” Alekseev, M. P., ed., Turgenevskii sbornik(Moscow, 1964), 1:344-78 (esp. 345–63)Google Scholar.
2 Unless otherwise indicated, data given are drawn from these standard references: Kleman, M. K., Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva I. S. Turgeneva(Moscow, 1934)Google Scholar; Nikitina, N. S., Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva I. S. Turgeneva 1818–1858(St. Petersburg, 1995)Google Scholar; Kleman, M. K., /. S. Turgenev: Ocherk zhizni i tvorchestva(Leningrad, 1936)Google Scholar; and indexes and commentary to Turgenev, I. S., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati vos'mi tomakh(Moscow, 1960–1968)Google Scholar (PSS= Works, Pis'ma= Letters).
3 Zaborova, Rukopisi I. S. Turgeneva. Letters not examined for this study are items 860, 869, 872–76, 884, 887-88, 909–12, 929, 948, 956, 958, 965, 967 (pp. 115–24). All translations in this article are my own.
4 The late Leonard Schapiro assumed that the letters were all in French (Turgenev[New York, 1978], 24), a slip that he kindly acknowledged. Personal communication, 18 September 1981.
5 I. M. Malysheva, “Mat’ I. S. Turgeneva i ego tvorchestvo: Po neizdannym pis'mam Turgenevoi k synu,” Russkaia mysl', 1915, bk. 6, sec. 2, pp. 99–111 and bk. 12, sec. 2, pp. 110–20; Malysheva, I. M., “Pis'ma materi,”in Piksanov, N. K., ed., Turgenevskii sbornik(Petrograd, 1915), 24–48 Google Scholar; Kleman, M. K., “Russkii iazyk i literaturnye interesy v sem'e Turgeneva,” Literatumaia mysl': Al'manakh(Petrograd, 1923), 222–29Google Scholar. Nina Serafimovna Nikitina, in the preface to her edition cited above, indicates the pressing need for a full edition of Turgeneva’s letters to Ivan (Nikitina, Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva I. S. Turgeneva 1818–1858, In).
6 John, Updike, Buchanan Dying(New York, 1974), 259 Google Scholar.
7 Chernov, N. M., “Povest’ I. S. Turgeneva ‘Pervaia liubov'’ i ee real'nye istochniki,” Voprosy literatury, 1973, no. 9:225-41Google Scholar.
8 Richard Hellie of the University of Chicago kindly provided these estimates of V. P.’s relative wealth (Personal communication, 5 November 1995). She numbered her serfs at three thousand (= male souls) in a letter of 25 September 1838.
9 Sources are discussed, up to a point, in Schapiro, Turgenev, 11. Suffice it to say that Turgenev was sexually active, discreet, and a rich man with every opportunity.
10 T. Volkova, “V. N. Zhitova [= Bibi] i ee memuary,” in Zhitova, V. N., Vospominaniia o sem'e I. S. Turgeneva(Tula, 1961), 5–19 Google Scholar.
11 Den, T. P., “S. N. Turgenev i ego synov'ia,” Russkaia literatura, 1967, no. 2:129-35Google Scholar; Gromov, V. A., “Sekretnoe nabliudenie za S. N. Turgenevym i ego pis'ma k A. N. Turgenevu,”in Izmailov, N. V., ed., Turgenevskii sbornik(Leningrad, 1967), 3:211–216Google Scholar; Kleman, M. K., “Otets Turgeneva v pis'makh k synov'iam,”in Koni, A. F., ed., Turgenevskii sbornik(Petrograd, 1921), 131–42Google Scholar.
12 Protasov, V. V., “K biografii I. S. Turgeneva,” Russkaia literatura, 1971, no. 2:123–24Google Scholar(birth certificate obtained in 1832 by his parents, to enroll him in the military academy at Petersburg).
13 Kolontaeva, V., “Vospominaniia o s. Spasskom,” Istoricheskii vestnik, 1885, bk. 10, p. 63 Google Scholar.
14 Henry, James, The Notebooks of Henry James,ed. Matthiessen, F. O.and Murdock, Kenneth B.(New York, 1955), 101 Google Scholar.
15 Rice, James L., “Turgenev’s Mother and Other Problems of ‘First Love,’”in Simon, Karlinsky, Rice, James L., and Scherr, Barry P., eds., O RUS! Studia litteraria slavica in honorem Hugh McLean(Berkeley, 1995), 249–60Google Scholar.
16 Ivan, Tourguénev, Nouvelle correspondance inédite,ed. Zviguilsky, A.(Paris, 1972), 2:116Google Scholar.
17 Presented in italics in the original: Ivan, Tourguenef, “Un premier amour,”in his Nouvelles scénes de la vie russe(Paris, 1863), 426–28Google Scholar. See Kiiko, E. I., “Okonchanie povesti ‘Pervaia liubov'’(1863),” in Dubovikov, A. N.and Zil'bershtein, I. Z., eds., Iz parizhskogo arkhiva I. S. Turgeneva, bk. 1 [= Literatumoe nasledstvo,vol. 73, bk. l](Moscow, 1964), 59–68 Google Scholar.
18 This sweeping exposé formula was part of Turgenev’s agenda in his plans for On the Eve, a companion piece to “First Love.” PSS(1964), 8:408 and 499.
19 Pis'ma(1961), 1:209.
20 Likhtenshtein, E. I., “Istoriia bolezni I. S. Turgeneva,” Klinicheskaia meditsina, 1968, vol. 46, no. 9, pp. 134–42 (esp. 141)Google Scholar.
21 Pis'ma(1961), 1:412.
22 PSS(1962), 3:175.
23 PSS(1963), 5:275, 285, 287, 290–92, 597n. Zhitova, Vospominaniia o sem'e I. S. Turgeneva.
24 Turgenev’s first attempt at a major work of fiction was Two Generations(ca. 1852–55). In the only published fragment, “Sobstvennaia gospodskaia kontora” (1859), his mother is portrayed at the power center, her late husband’s office. (One notes the gender ambiguity of gospodskaia). Apparently this domestic material was too close to home for Turgenev’s taste or comfort, and he abandoned the project. PSS(1963), 6:7–17, 496–501. A. Mazon, “Rabota Turgeneva nad romanom ‘Dva pokoleniia’” (with plans and commentary), Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 73, bk. 1, pp. 39–58.
25 PSS(1960), 1:368–419 (esp. 418), 611–14. Note the facsimile of Turgenev’s manuscript title page for “Steno,” precisely dated just before and after his father’s death (371). “First Love” is not included among the Mystery Tales, but it belongs with them. The ideaof the hero’s first love bodies forth in the tolling of bells from the Donskoi Monastery (where the author’s real mother had been entombed), engendering in him “depression, joy, premonition, desire, and fear of life“— all soon condensed in the heroine’s name, Zinaida. She in turn ends as a disembodied voice, drawing the hero to the deathbed of an anonymous old woman. See Rice, “Turgenev’s Mother,“ 252; and Pumpianskii, L. V., “Gruppa ‘tainstvennykh povestei,’”in Turgenev, I. S., Sochineniia(Moscow, 1929), 8:v-xxGoogle Scholar.
26 Pis'ma(1961), 1:365. Aleksandrovskii, B. P., “Istoriia bolezni Ivana Sergeevicha Turgeneva,” Vrachebnoe delo, 1949, no. 8, cols. 741–44 (esp. 743, on pigmentation)Google Scholar. The impact of V. P.’s language on her son’s style (her phraseology, syntax, and rhetorical manner) remains to be considered in a comprehensive biography of the writer.