Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev Research Paper

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev is a famed Russian novelist, poet, and playwright who had a very large impact on Russian literature and culture. Turgenev and his writings helped influence a new era of Russian literature. His works also had a profound impact on the Western world as well. Many of his works have been translated into many different languages and he is highly regarded by the French. His writings also helped to produce a new generation of Western authors and influenced great authors like Henry James and Joseph Conrad. But Turgenev’s biggest impact was in his mother country of Russia.
Turgenev is a revolutionary author. He wrote novels, plays, and poems that changed the genre of Russian literature. The style of his writings helped to change …show more content…
“Rudin is a brilliant man; his knowledge is diversified, he is an eloquent, irresistible debater, and he can talk interestingly on most subjects.” His character was modeled after a revolutionary leader, Michael Bakunin and who considered as a radical idealist that suffered due to the fact that many of his ideas and thoughts were too far ahead of his time and many people were not able to understand him. The fact that Rudin’s character was modeled after a revolutionary anarchist leader shows that these revolutionary ideas were reflected in his actions also. A main example can be seen in the death of Rudin at the end of the novel. Rudin left Russia to join in the Revolutionary battles in France. Rudin ends up being killed after being mistaken as a Polish soldier while storming a barricade. The fact that Rudin joined in a revolution occurring in another country reflects the mindsets of Russian thinkers and authors during this time period. A Russian political leader that was highly influenced by this novel was communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. Author Stanley Page states that Turgenev was Lenin’s favorite author and that many of his ideas came from the works due to the fact that Lenin was “concerned in his writings mainly with relations of the nobility to the Russian nobility.” Although many revolutionary ideas are seen through …show more content…
The works of authors, like Pushkin and Lermontov, often had romantic elements behind it. Turgenev introduced a completely new genre of Russian literature, realism. In the article “Turgenev’s Aesthetic and Western Realism”, author Victor Terras shows Turgenev’s passion for realism, stating, “as for Turgenev’s aesthetic, the central fact is that both his theory and practice are realistic on principle. He prefers observation to invention, research to fantasy, “unaesthetic” particulars to “aesthetic” commonplaces.” Realism in Rudin can be seen in the characters and scenes in his writing. Characters like Rudin, Darya Milhailovna and Alexandra Pavlovna all had background and lifestyles that reflected the lifestyles of the Russian nobility and intellectuals of the time. From the houses they lived in to their education, these were all