Starter kit for Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches
Sometimes we just start again. It's 45 years since I've read anything by Turgenev. But there we are, A Sportsman's Sketches is on Gutenberg in Constance Garnett's 1895 translation, which is divided into two volumes.
Volume 1:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8597/pg8597-images.html
Volume 2:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8744/8744-h/8744-h.htm
Here's the Russian text:
It was about two hundred paces to the bank. Yermolaï walked boldly and without stopping (so well had he noted the track), only occasionally crying out: 'More to the left—there's a hole here to the right!' or 'Keep to the right—you'll sink in there to the left….' Sometimes the water was up to our necks, and twice poor Sutchok, who was shorter than all the rest of us, got a mouthful and spluttered. 'Come, come, come!' Yermolaï shouted roughly to him—and Sutchok, scrambling, hopping and skipping, managed to reach a shallower place, but even in his greatest extremity was never so bold as to clutch at the skirt of my coat. Worn out, muddy and wet, we at last reached the bank.
Two hours later we were all sitting, as dry as circumstances would allow, in a large hay barn, preparing for supper. The coachman Yehudiil, an exceedingly deliberate man, heavy in gait, cautious and sleepy, stood at the entrance, zealously plying Sutchok with snuff (I have noticed that coachmen in Russia very quickly make friends); Sutchok was taking snuff with frenzied energy, in quantities to make him ill; he was spitting, sneezing, and apparently enjoying himself greatly. Vladimir had assumed an air of languor; he leaned his head on one side, and spoke little. Yermolaï was cleaning our guns. The dogs were wagging their tails at a great rate in the expectation of porridge; the horses were stamping and neighing in the out-house…. The sun had set; its last rays were broken up into broad tracts of purple; golden clouds were drawn out over the heavens into finer and ever finer threads, like a fleece washed and combed out. … There was the sound of singing in the village.
(End of "Lgov")
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| Illustration for "Lgov" by Pyotr Sokolov |
[Image source: Wikipedia .]
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A Sportsman's Sketches was published in 1852, collecting 22 pieces that had nearly all been published in magazines during the previous five years.
[The only exception, I think, was "Two country gentlemen", written (like much of the collection) in 1847 but not published until now. Possibly the ending was too nakedly political for the magazine editors.]
In this 1852 version, the contents consisted of #1 - #21 and #25.
Twenty years later, Turgenev wrote and added three more pieces:
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| Trying to work all this out! |
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I thought my reading choice would be tasteful but light entertainment but of course that's wrong. Under the hood the sportsman's sketches are a devastating portrait of rural Russia during the serfdom era. Both the terrible ill-treatment of the peasants, and the corrupting effect on the landowners' outlook, are unsparingly portrayed. (This most toxic and dehumanizing phase of Russian serfdom was a relatively recent development; since the early 18th century really. Like chattel slavery in America it had attained a new level of ruthlessness.)
If Turgenev's book really contributed to the Czar's decision to abolish serfdom in 1861, then it's one of the most historically significant of literary fictions. Though there were other causes (e.g. Russia's ignominious defeat in the Crimean war.) And reform was in the air: Russia was backward, it was falling behind.... Besides, plenty of other Russian authors were idealizing the Russian peasant. Indeed Turgenev rather stands out for his restraint, his melancholy realism, his sense of limits. His sportsman may have access to the life of the country like no-one else of his class, but he's still an outsider.
Anyway the czar left it to the landowners to organize abolition. They kept the best two thirds of the land, the ex-serfs had the worst third. The landowners were compensated, the ex-serfs had to pay. Since the ex-serfs had no money, their payment was in labour. So the best land still got worked for the landowner, while the wretched land from which the peasants were supposed to draw a subsistence lay neglected. In many ways their lives got even harder.
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I've been looking up some basic information to assist my reading. I'll share my "research" (i.e. web searches) though I don't suppose it'll be much use to anyone else. In my youth I read thousands of pages of 19th-century Russian literature without ever bothering to understand these things, but now I want to.
Kvas, kvass:
Popular beverage in the rye belt of Russia and Eastern Europe. The main ingredient is rye; it is top-fermented but has little alcohol (<1.5%) or even none. Comparable to Sweden's once-popular svagdricka (weak drink), which my great-grandfather Karl used to haul up and down the Baltic coast.
Preference:
A card game, mentioned frequently. Still played in Russia, but the height of its popularity was in the 1850s. A three-player game with contracts and tricks. Uses a piquet pack (32 cards). Reminds me of solo whist, but more complicated. Also played in other variants across Eastern Europe. The Swedish version was called Priffe.
Wormwood:
In his nature descriptions Turgenev often mentions it as an aromatic wild plant. Wormwood is Artemisia absinthium. Probably that's what Turgenev was talking about, but I wondered momentarily if he might have meant Artemisia vulgaris (Mugwort), another fragrant plant. (You may have heard that "Chernobyl" means mugwort in Ukrainian.) This thought may have been prompted by mugwort being much more common than wormwood in southern England!
Broken-winded (horse):
A horse condition aka recurrent airway obstruction, characterized by increased effort to breathe. Comparable to human COPD, it is an allergic reaction. Typically caused by dust or mould spores and associated with horses fed on hay or bedded on straw (though as with other allergic reactions it only affects certain individuals). Limits a horse's ability to work.
Little Russia, Great Russia:
Commonplace terms in the 19th century, but less so since 1917.
The former term refers, broadly, to Ukraine. The latter term refers, broadly, to what we now call Russia. Another term was "White Russia", referring to Belarus.
For Turgenev, growing up in and writing about the Oryol region, south-west of Moscow and not far from Ukraine, these were useful everyday terms.
Today "Little Russia" is a controversial term likely to cause offense.
The steppes:
The Eurasian or Great Steppe is a more or less uninterrupted band of semi-arid grassland stretching all the way from Hungary to Manchuria. The segment relevant to Turgenev's book is known as the Western Steppe.
The steppe region in its strict sense supports scrub but not the formation of forests, due to insufficient moisture.
Along its northern edge is an intermediate region sometimes known as forest-steppe, where steppe grassland is interspersed with e.g. oak-wood.
Most of the book's locations are not on the steppes, but they weren't far away. In #17 (The Singers), the location is described as a steppe village, yet at the end we learn that it's just three miles from the narrator's own village.
Today almost all of the Western Steppe is under the plough, and is used to grow arable crops. The most dramatic expansion of agriculture was in the 1950s. There are only a few scattered reserves of "virgin steppe".
Nightingales:
Commonly mentioned in the nature descriptions. We also learn that people liked to keep them in cages, and hence it was possible to make a precarious living by catching them.
The nightingales of Kursk were renowned for being the best singers. Hence "piping like a Kursk nightingale". [Nadezhda Plevitskaya, the opera singer and Cheka spy, was nicknamed the Kursk Nightingale.]
I had once had a brother knocking about, with the English disease in his neck, but he soon died . . . (#20, The Hamlet of the Shtchigri District):
The "English disease" is rickets. Daniel Whistler, the first physician to describe it, found it invariably fatal in infancy, and often fatal later. "When the neck can scarcely support the head they seldom survive" (see https://www.jstor.org/stable/24619850 .)
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| Illustration for #18 (Piotr Petrovich Karataev) by Pyotr Sokolov |
[Image source: Wikimedia Commons .]
Ratik Asokan's introduction:
https://4columns.org/asokan-ratik/a-sportsmans-notebook
Labels: Ivan Turgenev
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