A Sportsman’s Sketches

2016 | Fiction & Poetry

The first work by Ivan Turgenev to attain wide attention, A Sportsman's Sketches is a collection of short stories mostly set amid Russia's rural population of serfs and peasants.

Written by Turgenev in response to the stark poverty and injustices he witnessed in Russia, the stories here depict various encounters with peasants, while the narrator himself remains unseen. Each different tale illustrates a different injustice, with characters often ordinary peasants scraping a living off the land. Others, such as the dwarf Kasyan, combine a love of folklore with a distaste for the society they live and work within.

Some peasants are kindly and popular, while others are thrifty and wise - in spite of their shared circumstances, Turgenev paints a picture of a countryside which contained both arable beauty and social neglect. Although some of Turgenev's stories are short anecdotes which state a simple point before concluding, others colourfully expound upon their subjects and environment.

The author himself also underwent personal abuse on the part of his mother - far from breaking the writer's spirit, this early oppression steeled Turgenev against wrongdoing. Much of his authoring career was spent vilifying the abysmal standard of living the Russian serfs endured under Tsarist rule. The publication of A Sportsman's Sketches resulted in jail time for the author, but also contributed to the outlawing of serfdom in Russia.

Ivan Turgenev (Author)