Includes: The Diary of a Superfluous Man, A Tour in the Forest, Yakov Pasinkov, Andrei Kolosov, and A Correspendence. The Diary of a Superfluous Man is an 1850 novella by Russian author Ivan Turgenev. It is written in the first person in the form of a diary by a man who has a few days left to live as he recounts incidents of his life. The story has become the archetype for the Russian literary concept of the superfluous man.
How is this book unique? Font adjustments & biography included Unabridged (100% Original content) Illustrated About The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories by Ivan Turgenev The Diary of a Superfluous Man is an 1850 novella by Russian author Ivan Turgenev. It is written in the first person in the form of a diary by a man who has a few days left to live as he recounts incidents of his life. The story has become the archetype for the Russian literary concept of the superfluous man. Plot Summary: The doctor has just left me. At last I have got at something definite! For all his cunning, he had to speak out at last. Yes, I am soon, very soon, to die. The frozen rivers will break up, and with the last snow I shall, most likely, swim away whither? God knows! To the ocean too. Well, well, since one must die, one may as well die in the spring. But isn't it absurd to begin a diary a fortnight, perhaps, before death? What does it matter? And by how much are fourteen days less than fourteen years, fourteen centuries? Beside eternity, they say, all is nothingness--yes, but in that case eternity, too, is nothing. I see I am letting myself drop into metaphysics; that's a bad sign--am I not rather faint-hearted, perchance? I had better begin a description of some sort. It's damp and windy out of doors.
A vivid picture of nineteenth-century Russian society, but above all the poignant story of a man whose mortality becomes the only aspect of life that he shares with his fellow man.
The Essential Turgenev will provide American readers with the first comprehensive, portable edition of this great Russian author's works. It offers an extensive introduction to the writings that established Turgenev as one of the preeminent literary figures of his time, and reveals the breadth of insight into changing social conditions that made Turgenev a portal to Russian intellectual life. Readers will find complete, exemplary translations of Turgenev's finest novels, Rudin, A Nest of Gentry, and Fathers and Sons, along with the lapidary novella First Love. The volume also includes selections from Sportsman's Sketches, seven of Turgenev's most compelling short stories, and fifteen prose poems. It also contains samples of the author's nonfiction drawn from autobiographical sketches, memoirs, public speeches, plus the influential essay "Hamlet and Don Quixote" and correspondence with Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and others.
