N.N.

Calmly and gracefully thou movest along the path of life, tearless and smileless, and scarce a heedless glance of indifferent attention ruffles thy calm.

Thou art good and wise ... and all things are remote from thee, and of no one hast thou need.

Thou art fair, and no one can say, whether thou prizest thy beauty or not.
No sympathy hast thou to give; none dost thou desire.

Thy glance is deep, and no thought is in it; in that clear depth is emptiness.

So in the Elysian field, to the solemn strains of Gluck's melodies, move without grief or bliss the graceful shades.

November 1879.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His novel 'Fathers and Sons' is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction. Turgenev's work is often considered a reflection of the social and political atmosphere of his time, marked by his opposition to serfdom and his advocacy of liberal reforms. He spent much of his later life in Western Europe and was a contemporary of fellow Russian literary figures Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

The Old Man

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, Simple Poetry

To The Memory Of U. P. Vrevsky

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, Simple Poetry

A Visit

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, Simple Poetry

A Rule Of Life

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, Simple Poetry

English

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The Old Man

Days of darkness, of dreariness, have come.... Thy own infirmities, the sufferings of those dear to thee, the chill and gloom of old age. All that thou hast loved, to which thou hast given thyself irrevocably, is falling, going to pieces. The way is all down-hill.

What canst thou do? Grieve? Complain? Thou wilt aid not thyself nor others that way....

On the bowed and withering tree the leaves are smaller and fewer, but its green is yet the same.

Do thou too shrink within, withdraw into thyself, into thy memories, and there, deep down, in the very depths of the soul turned inwards on itself, thy old life, to which thou alone hast the key, will be bright again for thee, in all the fragrance, all the fresh green, and the grace and power of its spring!

But beware ... look not forward, poor old man!<...

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

Stay!

Stay! as I see thee now, abide for ever in my memory!

From thy lips the last inspired note has broken. No light, no flash is in thy eyes; they are dim, weighed down by the load of happiness, of the blissful sense of the beauty, it has been thy glad lot to express - the beauty, groping for which thou hast stretched out thy yearning hands, thy triumphant, exhausted hands!

What is the radiance - purer and higher than the sun's radiance - all about thy limbs, the least fold of thy raiment?

What god's caressing breath has set thy scattered tresses floating?

His kiss burns on thy brow, white now as marble.

This is it, the mystery revealed, the mystery of poesy, of life, of love!
This, this is immortality! Other immortality there is none, nor need be.
For this instant thou art immo...

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

To The Memory Of U. P. Vrevsky

On dirt, on stinking wet straw under the shelter of a tumble-down barn, turned in haste into a camp hospital, in a ruined Bulgarian village, for over a fortnight she lay dying of typhus.

She was unconscious, and not one doctor even looked at her; the sick soldiers, whom she had tended as long as she could keep on her legs, in their turn got up from their pestilent litters to lift a few drops of water in the hollow of a broken pot to her parched lips.

She was young and beautiful; the great world knew her; even the highest dignitaries had been interested in her. Ladies had envied her, men had paid her court ... two or three had loved her secretly and truly. Life had smiled on her; but there are smiles that are worse than tears.

A soft, tender heart ... and such force, such eagerness for sacrifice! To help th...

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

Nature

I dreamed I had come into an immense underground temple with lofty arched roof. It was filled with a sort of underground uniform light.

In the very middle of the temple sat a majestic woman in a flowing robe of green colour. Her head propped on her hand, she seemed buried in deep thought.

At once I was aware that this woman was Nature herself; and a thrill of reverent awe sent an instantaneous shiver through my inmost soul.

I approached the sitting figure, and making a respectful bow, 'O common Mother of us all!' I cried, 'of what is thy meditation? Is it of the future destinies of man thou ponderest? or how he may attain the highest possible perfection and happiness?'

The woman slowly turned upon me her dark menacing eyes. Her lips moved, and I heard a ringing voice like the clang of iron.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

To-Morrow! To-Morrow!

How empty, dull, and useless is almost every day when it is spent! How few the traces it leaves behind it! How meaningless, how foolish those hours as they coursed by one after another!

And yet it is man's wish to exist; he prizes life, he rests hopes on it, on himself, on the future.... Oh, what blessings he looks for from the future!

But why does he imagine that other coming days will not be like this day he has just lived through?

Nay, he does not even imagine it. He likes not to think at all, and he does well.

'Ah, to-morrow, to-morrow!' he comforts himself, till 'to-morrow' pitches him into the grave.

Well, and once in the grave, thou hast no choice, thou doest no more thinking.

May 1879.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

The Monk

I used to know a monk, a hermit, a saint. He lived only for the sweetness of prayer; and steeping himself in it, he would stand so long on the cold floor of the church that his legs below the knees grew numb and senseless as blocks of wood. He did not feel them; he stood on and prayed.

I understood him, and perhaps envied him; but let him too understand me and not condemn me; me, for whom his joys are inaccessible.

He has attained to annihilating himself, his hateful ego; but I too; it's not from egoism, I pray not.

My ego, may be, is even more burdensome and more odious to me, than his to him.

He has found wherein to forget himself ... but I, too, find the same, though not so continuously.

He does not lie ... but neither do I lie.

November 1879.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev