Ivan Turgenev
Biography of Ivan Turgenev
A prominent writer from 19th century Russia, Ivan Turgenev was born in Moscow to a family of wealthy landowners. Growing up, Turgenev was frequently abused by his mother, who was abused herself by family when she was young. Furthermore, he witnessed his mother also abusing the serfs on her estate. In one of her letters to Turgenev, she strongly bashes one of Turgenev's brothers for associating with a "whore" while urging Turgenev to convince him to stop. His mother's poor treatment of serfs combined with her controlling personality as a mother had a great influence on Turgenev and his literary works (Campbell 9, 13). He believed that serfs were people with complex personalities and pushed for their emancipation. Mumu, written by Turgenev in 1854, is a short story about a mute serf who loses both the girl he loved and a stray dog he found and took great care of due to his mistress' orders. Although Turgenev was banished to his estate for breaking censorship regulations, his works influenced Tsar Alexander II to abolish serfdom. Despite Turgenev's dedication towards freeing the serfs, it should be remembered that he sexually mistreated one of his female serfs when he was young. The girl was then whipped by his mother and was sent to exile.
Dostoevsky's Relationship With Turgenev
While the two writers were both heavily affected by their childhood, they had different backgrounds and beliefs. Unlike Turgenev, Dostoevsky was born to a commoner family and was less financially fortunate growing up. In 19th century Russia, intellectuals were divided into Slavophiles and westerners. While the Slavophiles valued Russian values and traditions such as the Orthodox Church, westerners believed that European values were superior to Russian values. Dostoevsky was a Slavophile and a nationalist who abhorred European values like capitalism and nihilism. Turgenev, while less radical than Dostoevsky, was a European liberal (Chamberlain 16). While he was living outside of Russia, Turgenev viewed Russians as lazy, passive, and capricious. This is in direct contrast to Dostoevsky's quote in The Writer's Diary: April 1877 Issue, "All of them (westerners) have overlooked the strength of the (Russian) people, the spirit of the people" (933).
Young Dostoevsky was fascinated by Turgenev when he met him in 1845. In his letter to his brother, Dostoevsky wrote "T. is a really splendid person! I've almost lost my own heart to him. A highly gifted writer, an aristocrat, handsome, rich, intelligent, cultured, and only twenty-five - I really don't know what more he could ask from fate" (29). However, the relationship between the two writers took an opposite turn as their ideologies clashed. After reading Turgenev's Smoke, a novel that criticizes Russia and its people, Dostoevsky confronted Turgenev and told him to buy a telescope and direct it to Russia as his current views on Russia were "so utterly lost" (117). These insults made Turgenev enraged and feel personally attacked. Dostoevsky's insults on Turgenev continued in his letter to Nikolay Strachov, a philosopher, where he called Turgenev "the most played-out of all played-out Russian writers" (187). Furthermore, Dostoevsky parodied Turgenev in his novel Demons as Karmazinov, a pretentious westerner writer fond of evil nihilists and anarchists. Turgenev viewed this parody as unloving and wrote that he did nothing which warrants Dostoevsky's hatred towards him. Their relationship was also worsened when Dostoevsky borrowed 50 thalers from Turgenev in 1865 and was unable to pay him back for years due to his gambling problems. Frustrated with his situation, Dostoevsky visited Turgenev in 1867 and let out his humiliation through hostility.
The debt was finally paid in 1875. The hostile relationship between Dostoevsky and Turgenev was fixed in 1880 when Turgenev praised Dostoevsky for having done great things after Dostoevsky's speech. The two writers sincerely embraced each other in that moment (Carr 163). Dostoevsky died the next year. Turgenev called Dostoevsky's death "a real chastisement from God" (315) and remarked that Dostoevsky had noble ideals. Turgenev's death followed two years later.
Works Cited
Campbell, Jack Dempsey. “An Examination of the Literary Relationship of John Galsworthy and Ivan Turgenev.” 1959.
Carr, E. H. “Turgenev and Dostoevsky.” The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 8, no. 22, June 1929, pp. 156–163., https://www.jstor.org/stable/4202369.
Chamberlin, William Henry. “Turgenev: The Eternal Romantic.” Russian Review, vol. 5, no. 2, 1946, p. 10., https://doi.org/10.2307/125154.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. April 1877, Chapters 1 and 2 (A Writer's Diary). Translated by Kenneth Lantz, Northwestern University Press, 1993.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoyevsky to His Family and Friends. Translated by Ethel Colburn Mayne, 2nd ed., Chatto & Windus, 1917.
Rice, James L. “Varvara Petrovna Turgeneva in Unpublished Letters to Her Son Ivan (1838-1844).” Slavic Review, vol. 56, no. 1, 1997, pp. 1–14., https://doi.org/10.2307/2500652.
Schapiro, Leonard Bertram. Turgenev His Life and Times. Harvard University Press, 1982.