Home of the Gentry - Ivan Turgenev

Turgenev's second novel is indeed closest to the ideal of pure Turgenev, certainly reminiscent of his dramatic work, depicting the lives of the gentry, Russian society and family relationships, while maintaining a humanistic stance towards the circumstances of the peasantry, all with a deep connection and love for the country and the landscape itself. It's even initially staged like one of Turgenev's dramas, each of the principal characters making their walk-on entrances at the Kalitin household, but Turgenev novelistically fills out the relevant background detail of a number of the characters with depth and precision.

It's at the Kalitin household that Lavretsky, on his way back home to his estate after the break up of his marriage in Europe, calls in on his relatives and falls in love with his cousin Liza Mikhaylovna. Liza is however being courted by an important but dull government official who Lavretsky feels is unworthy of the deeply religious young woman, but Lavretsky's own bad experiences in love and his uncertainty over the position of his ex-wife causes him to hesitate about whether he should declare his feelings to Liza.

For all the humanistic position of Tugenev's work, his superb evocation of the Russian landscape, the circumstances of its people and the gentrification of society towards the European model, Home of the Gentry is more than anything about affairs of the heart. "Another’s heart is like a dark forest", the author muses here and perhaps only Chekhov really has the ability to delve there, but Turgenev brilliantly manages to identify how the conflicting emotions between a man and a woman drive one’s actions more than any social conscience or lofty ideal, and is without peer in depicting those feelings with truth and beauty in his works (as opposed to Chekhov's darker cynicism). Magnificent.

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