Sketches from a Hunter's Album (1852)

A truly excellent collection of short stories. I confess that Turgenev's most popular work left me cold, but this more than made up for it. Excellent stories and parables about the nature and beauty and tragedy of life across all layers of society. The only fault I could find was almost certainly due to the clunkiness of the translation, which I won't let detract from my admiration this time. Excellent stuff. ( )

Exactly as beautiful as reputation suggests. Gorgeous use of adjectives and description, an amazing, subtle point of view, and an underlying power. To re-read and study and absorb at every possible occasion. (why is there no good English-language biography of Turgenev? Why?) ( )

I read no Russian; but I bought this, hoping to replace the old copy I have put out by Signet in the 60s. Whatever the quality of the translation--and perhaps someone who also reads Russian can let me know--the Penguin version is very much inferior in use of the English language and its tone (as of cultured people in the post-Napoleanic, pre-American Civil War period). Instances: the description of a game bag, in the Signet version "embroidered in worsted" in the Penguin version simply "worsted"; or "One beautiful July morning I rode over to his place"(Penguin) versus "One fine July morning I went over to his place on horseback" (Signet). In the second case "rode" could have been on one of several kinds of wheeled vehicle which in other places the hunter used. Or "They're cutting it [the wood]down," (Penguin) instead of "I'm having some timber felled there."
I've seldom been so disappointed in a book! ( )

Turgenev lays bare the injustices and arbitrariness of the serf system simply through recounting stories in which the humanity of all the characters, good, bad and middling, and with all their flaws, is allowed to speak, and his breathtakingly beautiful evocations of the natural world of the Russian countryside create the background and context. There's humour too, as there must be in all accounts of human interactions, and pathos which at times is almost unbearable. As with the 'A Russian Gentleman' and 'Years of Childhood' volumes of Sergei Aksakov's autobiographical trilogy, Turgenev's 'Sketches from a Hunter's Album' seems to take you to the actual living reality of rural Russia under serfdom. A wonderfully evocative book and a joy to read. ( )

The Book Report: This edition of "A Sportsman's Sketches" or "Sketches from a Hunter's Album" contains 13 of a possible 25 short fictions published by the tyro writer in Russia's preeminent literary magazine, The Contemporary, from 1847 to 1851. These were his first prose outpourings, designed to sustain his independent life far away from his autocratic and abusive mother. He brought these luminous, beautiful vignettes to life in partial imitation of his beloved's husband's work...Louis Viardot, much older husband of opera singer Pauline Viardot, and author of Souvenirs de chasse, a very similar collection of huntsman's memories of the countryside and people of Viardot's youth...but of his own youthful world at his mother's country estate.

The stories all illustrate the young author's liberalism, his disdain for the serf system sustaining a luxurious lifestyle for some and penury and privation for most. They were hailed by his fellow liberals, and entered the canon of Russian literature on the strength of that appeal. But generations of readers will attest that what keeps people reading these vignettes is a certain deftness and facility with characters and descriptions that is so robust that it even survives translation. These are objects of rare beauty. Not much when considered as stories, they blossom into beauty when viewed as moments lived by a very acute observer.

My Review: "Singers" is possibly my favorite of the sketches. The bleakness of the village, the unexpectedness of the singing contest in such a place, and the sheer animal drive of humans to find SOME joy in life...memorable.

"Kasyan from the Beautiful Lands" makes me weep...the dwarf, his simple belief that the world is good but mankind is not, his strength and certainty, all in contrast to our helpless and feckless narrator...how clear is Turgenev's picture of the unfairness of privilege unearned.

"Forest and Steppe" is, alone, the best reason I can give to you to go and get this book and read it. It shimmers. Its beauty of image and of imagination is simply unsurpassable. It is as close to perfect as any piece of writing I've ever seen.

So many of the others are, while good and worthy pieces of fiction, just not superb, that I feel it's best to say...the reason to read this collection is the cumulative effect of many a small, beautiful moment, not a Grand Revelation. More like walking in the woods by yourself, noticing birdsong and small shy flowers, than stumbling all unaware across the Grand Canyon. ( )