Sketches from a Hunter's Album Read Online Free Page A

is one of the most uproariously sardonic descriptions to be found in Turgenev’s work. The anonymous Hamlet’s subsequent recital of misfortunes and misalliances mixes the tragic and the comic in a narrative that explores what he refers to as ‘the extreme limit of unhappiness’. By the time he sticks his tongue out at himself in the mirror it is clear that the tragedy of his superfluity reflects the tragic loss of illusions and fond hopes experienced by Turgenev’s generation as a whole. The Hamlet’s preoccupation with self has comic aspects to it, but his final reconciliation is in its own way as bitter an acceptance of social inequality and complete obliteration of individuality as is the peasant’s subservience to his master.
    The independence of the ‘loner’, of the man, no matter what his social status or role, who opts for such freedom as he can obtain within the limits of the system evidently appealed to Turgenev and no figure in the
Sketches
exemplifies such independence better than Chertopkhanov. He made his first appearance in ‘Chertopkhanov and Nedopyuskin’ (
The Contemporary
, No. 2, 1849). His dashing, colourful personality, so naturally inclined to protect the weak and vulnerable, as he shows in the patronage which he extends to the unfortunate Nedopyuskin, has an eccentric side to it that may antagonize as much as it can endear. In general the issue of serfdomhere slips into the background and is replaced by a study of bachelorhood. The curious little ménage cultivated by the two bachelors, Chertopkhanov and Nedopyuskin, has an idyllic appeal. It seems, among these
Sketches
, as nearly ideal a condition as can be imagined. But the story of Chertopkhanov was not destined to end there. In 1872 Turgenev published a sequel ‘The End of Chertopkhanov’ (
The Herald of Europe
, No. 11) in which he not only dispensed with the device of narrator but he also adopted a looser, chronicle manner in telling the story of Chertopkhanov’s last years and death. In style and content, therefore, this work scarcely seems to form an organic part of the
Sketches
. It is the longest of them and among the most pessimistic. Divided into short chapters, it traces the slow decline of Chertopkhanov after his abandonment by Masha and the death of his bosom friend. Though the wonder horse Malek Adel becomes the treasured companion of his bachelorhood, the doubts in Chertopkhanov’s mind surrounding the ‘second’ Malek Adel seem to reinforce a sense that his eccentricity, like his fanatical pride, has a self-destructive edge to it. The story is noteworthy for its sympathetic portrayal of the Jewish horse-dealer Moshel Leiba, a second beneficiary of Chertopkhanov’s love of justice, yet the portrayal of the central figure himself as doomed by his own self-delusion and doubts fails on the whole to sustain his tragic image to a successful conclusion.
    No
Sketch
is more poignant or beautiful than ‘Living Relic’. It first appeared in 1874 in a collection of stories published to raise funds for famine victims in the Samara Province. The lucidly simple portrait of the peasant woman Lukeria who religiously endures the long travail of her illness evokes the image of a saint enduring a solitary martyrdom. The comparison with Joan of Arc does not aggrandize her fate. Lukeria’s humble, philosophical acceptance of misfortune reflects Turgenev’s pessimistic view, increasingly marked in his later years, that life must involve such submission to fate. This readiness to submit forms the crux of another
Sketch
first published in 1874, ‘Clatter of Wheels’. Though the narrator’s fears prove to be unfounded at the moment of crisis, the
Sketch
has a nice blend of humour and tension interlaced with characteristic passages of nature description. Finally, ‘Forest and Steppe’ (
The Contemporary
, No. 2, 1849), which was always the concluding