Author: Ivan Turgenev (Russian, 1818-1883)
Published: 1852
Category: Sketch
Text: archive.org
Summary:
A huntsman loses his way home at dusk, coming across a camp fire set up by a group of young boys herding horses. As he lazes nearby he listens to the boys tell each other stories of house spirits, water nymphs, near deaths, accidental deaths, mad women, sorrowful men and the anti-christ; at one point, the ugliest of the boys rushes out into the night to scare off a wolf, the same boy later goes to the river for water and returns saying he heard the ghost of a drowned boy call his name. The sketch ends with the huntsmen saying what a pity it was that the same boy 'met his end' that year.
Analysis:
This sketch reminds me of Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; it has the same combination of pastoral setting and superstition. Both authors are wonderful at describing landscape; Turgenev skilfully leads us through a changing scenery; moving us from daylight, through dusk into night; from the sun's glare to the moon's weak light; from the heights to the valley; from firm and dusty roads to damp, soft grasses; from a dawn of reason to a night of superstition. The narrator does not enter this world, he is not one of the boys, rather, he observes them in their natural habitat. And here lies the main difference between Turgenev and Irving, for Irving was one of the boys; proud to be a living, breathing part of the American landscape while Turgenev leaves the impression he enjoys riding freely across the Russian landscape but is not, and never has been, truly part of it.
