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9 unusual facts about Ivan Turgenev


A picture is worth a thousand words

For example the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev wrote (in Fathers and Sons in 1862), "A picture shows me at a glance what it takes dozens of pages of a book to expound."

Afanasy Fet

In 1853, encouraged by Nikolay Nekrasov, Fet joined the then rising Sovremennik circle, meeting among new faces his old friends Ivan Turgenev and critic Vasily Botkin.

Ivan Turgenev

Among them were Alexander Herzen and Turgenev himself, although the latter's decision to settle abroad probably had more to do with his fateful love for Pauline Viardot than anything else.

During the latter part of his life, Turgenev did not reside much in Russia: he lived either at Baden-Baden or Paris, often in proximity to the family of the celebrated opera singer Pauline Viardot, with whom he had a lifelong affair.

One of the stories in A Sportsman's Sketches, known as "Bezhin Lea" or "Byezhin Prairie", was later to become the basis for the controversial film Bezhin Meadow (1937) – directed by Sergei Eisenstein.

Turgenev, whose knowledge of Spanish, thanks to his contact with Pauline Viardot and her family, was good enough for him to have considered translating Cervantes's novel into Russian, played an important role in introducing this immortal figure of world literature into the Russian context.

Robert Dessaix

Dessaix's latest long work, Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev defies genre characterisation, interweaving a personal travelogue with a biography of Ivan Turgenev.

The English Review

In addition to continuing to print works by Conrad, Lawrence, and Wells, authors such as Sherwood Anderson, Anton Chekhov, Hermann Hesse, Aldous Huxley, Katherine Mansfield, Bertrand Russell, G. B. Shaw, Ivan Turgenev, and William Butler Yeats now appeared in the magazine's pages.

Theodor Storm

During a summer visit to Baden-Baden in 1864, where he had been invited by his friend, the author and painter Ludwig Pietsch, he made the acquaintance of the great Russian writer Ivan Turgenev.


Alexey Bogolyubov

His house was like a Russian colony: frequent visitors included Ivan Turgenev, Ilya Yefimovich Repin, Vasily Polenov, Mark Antokolski, Vasili Vasilyevich Vereshchagin.

Chekhov Library

According to archive records, the first books read by Chekhov were books on travel and adventures, then Miguel de Cervantes, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ivan Turgenev and Ivan Goncharov, later - Dimitri Pisarev, Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolay Aleksandrovich Dobrolyubov.

Dmitry Grigorovich

His first two short novels, The Village and Anton Goremyka, are seen as precursors of several important works by Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov.

Hristo G. Danov

Other books published by Danov included individual works by Euripides, Ivan Turgenev, Guy de Maupassant and Jules Verne.

Jinzai Kiyoshi

Jinzai is known for his translations of the works of the French writers André Gide and Marcel Proust, and the works of the Russian writers Alexander Pushkin, Ivan Turgenev and Anton Chekhov.

Marion Mainwaring

She translated Youth and Age: Three Novellas by Ivan Turgenev and edited The Portrait Game, records of a parlor game played by Turgenev and his friends.

Paul Adolphe Rajon

He etched both contemporary works and Old Masters as well as portraits, including ones of Ivan Turgenev, Théophile Gautier, J.S. Mill, Charles Darwin and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Ron Rifkin

Additional theatre credits include David Hirson's Wrong Mountain, Arthur Miller's Broken Glass, Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country, and Neil Simon's Proposals.

Rosemary Nicols

Later roles included Anna Sergeyevna in a 1971 adaptation of Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, and appearances in shows like The Persuaders! and General Hospital, and had her own folk music programme on TV but Nicols was soon to give up acting; she married writer, Frederic Mullally and moved to Malta to concentrate on writing.


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