Rudin was written by Turgenev in the immediate aftermath of the Crimean War, when it became obvious to many educated Russians that reform was needed. The main debate of Turgenev's own generation was that of Slavophiles versus Westernizers. Rudin depicts a typical man of this generation (known as 'the men of forties'), intellectual but ineffective. This interpretation of the superfluous man as someone who possesses great intellectual ability and potential, but is unable to realize them stems from Turgenev's own view of human nature, expressed in his 1860 speech 'Hamlet and Don Quixote', where...

VIRGIN SOIL by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) is his last and longest novel. In it he finally says everything yet unsaid on the subject of social change, idealism and yet futility of revolutions, serfs and peasants, and the upper classes. The hero, Nezhdanov -- the disillusioned young son of a nobleman -- and the Populist movement are young idealists working to bridge the gap between the common people and the nobility, and through them Turgenev works out his own troubled thoughts about social reform and tradition, vitality and stagnation. The ideas of gradual reform shown here are...

Je me retournais dans mon lit, n'arrivant pas a dormir. Que le diable emporte toutes ces sottises de tables tour- nantes ... Cela n'est bon qu'a vous detraquer les nerfs me disais-je... Peu a peu, le sommeil finit par me gagner... Tout a coup, je crus entendre, dans ma chambre, un son faible et plaintif comme une corde que l'on pince...

Khor et Kalinitch, paru dans une revue, rendit celebre Tourgueniev. Ce premier texte donne le theme de l'ensemble des recits de ce recueil: la chasse, dans de superbes paysages de plaines, de bois, d'etangs ou l'on s'egare tres vite, sous une chaleur torride ou une pluie battante. Nous decouvrons la vie des paysans russes vers 1850, leurs croyances naives, leurs chansons, leurs disputes (que de femmes battues ) mais surtout leur vie terrible: les maitres decident de tout (mariage, emploi), les deplacent a leur gre et appliquent une justice tres approximative quand ils osent se plaindre.

Torrents of Spring, also known as Spring Torrents, is a novel written by Ivan Turgenev during 1870 and 1871 when he was in his fifties. The story centers around a young Russian landowner named Dimitry Sanin who falls deliriously in love for the first time while visiting the German city of Frankfurt. It is widely held as one Turgenev's greatest novels as well as being highly autobiographical in nature.

Ce recit est en partie un roman autobiographique. Entre maints details personnels, Tourgueniev y laisse par exemple entendre que son pere aurait epouse sa mere par interet, cette derniere etant en effet une riche heritiere. Au debut de l'ete 1833, Vladimir Petrovitch, age alors de seize ans, prepare sans zele excessif ses examens d'entree a l'universite dans la propriete de ses parents, non loin de Moscou. Il tombe eperdument amoureux de Zenaide, jeune femme de vingt-et-un ans d'une singuliere beaute, qu'il observe de derriere la palissade separant son jardin du parc.

First Love is an example of a frame story. The story starts with the protagonist, Vladimir Petrovich, at a party. The three guests, all men "not old but no longer young," are taking turns recounting the stories of their first loves. When Vladimir's turn comes to tell his story, he suggests he write down the story in a notebook because it is a rather long, unusual tale and he is not adept at extemporaneous narration. The other men agree and a few weeks later the story within the story continues with Vladimir reading from his notebook as he recounts the memory of his first love.

Arkady Kirsanov has just graduated from the University of Petersburg and returns with a friend, Bazarov, to his father's modest estate in an outlying province of Russia. His father, Nikolai, gladly receives the two young men at his estate, called Maryino, but Nikolai's brother, Pavel, soon becomes upset by the strange new philosophy called "nihilism" which the young men, especially Bazarov advocate.

First Love was published in March 1860 in the Reader's Library. Like many of Turgenev's works, this one is highly autobiographical. Indeed, the author claimed it was the most autobiographical of all his works. Here Turgenev is retelling an incident from his own life, his infatuation with a young neighbor in the country, Catherine Shakovskoy (the Zinaida of the novella), an infatuation that lasted until his discovery that Catherine was in fact his own father's mistress.

Premier Amour est une nouvelle d'Ivan Tourgueniev. Commencee au debut de 1860, l'oeuvre est achevee le 22 mars (10 mars) 1860 a Saint-Petersbourg et publiee la meme annee dans la revue russe La Bibliotheque pour la lecture, aussi appelee en francais La Bibliotheque de lectures1. Sa premiere parution en francais date de 18632. Premier Amour est l'une des oeuvres de Tourgueniev ou point le pessimisme romantique de l'auteur qui se fait peintre des hommes inutiles et des amours inachevees. Il decrit l'amour comme un mal endemique, un desordre organique qui atteint ses semblables de diverses...