Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev

Dessaix travels to Germany, France and Russia to stand in the places that might help him get inside Turgenov's mind. This is a study of love, taking as its focus the relationship between Turgenov and Pauline Viardot. In the end it is more revealing about Dessaix than Turgenov, but I imagine this was always the intention. The book is full of doubt and question, but in the end the conclusion provides a satisfying and oddly comforting view of love (and existence) - Dessaix speaks for both himself and Turgenov. A great read but not always an easy one.

Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev are three giants of 19th-century Russian literature. Although Turgenev doesn't have the profile in the west of the other two, he is my personal favourite - less likely to grab you by the metaphorical lapels and yell in your face, perhaps, but with a great deal more imaginative sympathy.

Robert Dessaix's book on Turgenev, his travels and loves took a while to win me over - for my taste, the first half of the book contains a deal too little Turgenev and a deal too much "I'm Robert and even though I live in Tasmania I have cool and interesting friends all over Europe" - but once those friends recede into the background, the latter half of the book becomes a moving and fascinating study of Turgenev, his show more life, to a lesser extent his work, and the nature of love in Turgenev's day and today. Worth sticking with. show less

Ambling along in Melbourne, I found a signed copy of Twilight of Love in one of those swap libraries that people attach to their fences. This copy had never been read. I confess to being a fan of Robert Dessaix. Mainly due to my memories of the time when he hosted the Book Show on ABC radio. Ahh...those were the days. I admired his intelligence and archly incisive asides. He sometimes writes as he speaks - which is good because I could hear his voice. I chose to read this book at the same time as reading Wuthering Heights so (in my mind) the two are slightly interwoven. Both are about forms of love. It was an easy and enjoyable read, though a somewhat directionless, amble though time and place. But I love an amble and was happy to show more follow him around. As best I recall, Dessaix's final words in the book were that he should re-read Turgenev. This baffled me a little. He gave no real clues as to why Turgenev was so interesting. The thread that bound the amble to some kind of line was Dessaix's quest for an understanding of the kind of love that meant so much to Turgenev. Dessaix seemed to imagine that the answer might emerge as a dimension of place, but he is constantly disappointed and finds nothing. Then, at the end of the book, he remembers that he had promised to find something and quickly tries to cover himself with a fairly banal set of distinctions between sex, love and time stopping passion. I say banal because for me his conclusion was neither profound nor particularly interesting. He didn't open any doors that would encourage me to want to read Turgenev. Quite the reverse. However, as I mentioned, it was an enjoyable amble without destination. In Twilight of Love Dessaix is a flâneur and I don't think he would mind me saying that. show less