Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (Cyrillic: Иван Сергеевич Тургенев) was a novelist, poet, and dramatist, and now ranks as one of the towering figures of Russian literature. His major works include the short-story collection A Sportsman’s Sketches (1852) and the novels Rudin (1856), Home of the Gentry (1859), On the Eve (1860), and Fathers and Sons (1862).
These works offer realistic, affectionate portrayals of the Russian peasantry and penetrating studies of the Russian intelligentsia who were attempting to move the country into a new age. His masterpiece, Fathers and Sons, is considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.
Turgenev was a contemporary with Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. While these wrote about church and religion, Turgenev was more concerned with the movement toward social reform in Russia.
“Only one thing bothered me: at this very moment, as they say, of inexplicable bliss there would be a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach and my abdomen would be assailed by a melancholy, cold shivering. In the end I couldn't abide such happiness and ran away. ”
“[...] no carrot would be permitted in a soup that had not first assumed a rhomboidal or trapezoidal shape. ”
“I was afraid of looking into my heart...afraid of thinking seriously about anything...I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to admit to myself that I was not loved...”
“I was as happy as a fish in water, and I could have stayed in that room for ever, have never left that place.”
“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”
“Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel.”
“However passionate, sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes; they tell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of "indifferent" nature: they tell us, too, of eternal reconciliation and of life without end.”
“We sit in the mud, my friend, and reach for the stars.”