![]() However, even with all this subtext, Turgenev just didn't really have his heart in this one. That's why so much of the novel revolves around the theater : everything is a performance (and not a very good one) and only the best actors can fool the audience. Turgenev was making fun of the young Russian landowners and their wealth. He wanted to turn social convention on its head to have Maria marry a homosexual so that she can carouse about Europe with her fortune left solely to her from her peasant father. He wanted to take a shallow young landowner (one who owned serfs, otherwise known as slaves) and turn him into a fool and a slave. Yet again, from a meta point of view, Turgenev must have known that this is exactly the story he wanted to tell. So at the whim of everyone else around him is he that almost nothing really happens aside from total chance (his initial meeting of Gemma, the gust of wind, the meeting of Polozov all chance). However, that does not make for the most interesting character to follow around through every page of a novel. And of course that is exactly what Turgenev wanted to give us, Sanin is supposed to be a young, handsome, wealthy, and utterly shallow person. Yes he's very good looking and this has quite the effect on the people around him (young women), and we know he's given to flights of quick passion that keeps the plot moving along, but aside from that he's sort of an empty shell. I think the biggest problem with the novel is that we never really know Sanin. To read the novel in such a meta way would make this a brilliant novel, but after what I thought was a promising start, quickly becomes a bit tedious, empty of real feeling, and of not much consequence. Yet there are flashes of brilliance here and there, and perhaps that's why Turgenev wrote the novel in the first place, perhaps he was overcome with a flash of inspiration that he eventually had to see to the bitter end, just like our 'hero'. The impression I get from this novel is that it is written by an incredibly gifted author whose talents, sadly, have left him. The book ends quietly, logically, and sadly. ![]() It's a poignant tale, a tale of regret and loss. Turgenev's characters are sympathetically drawn even Madame Polisov - the most vividly alive character in the book - retains her essential humanity. She decides to seduce Sanin, apparently to feed her own vanity: she does it because she can. "Freedom" appears to be one of her favorite words. She and her husband have an "arrangement." He has no interest in her sexually, and the feeling is more than mutual, which leaves her with complete freedom to do as she pleases. This woman, Madame Polisov, is almost shockingly modern. So he visits the wife of an acquaintance to make arrangements to sell his estate. ![]() Sanin, a Russian visiting Frankfurt, meets and falls in love with an Italian girl whose family runs a confectioner's shop. Turgenev lays out the story with simplicity. Neville Jason does a great job with this slight but compelling tale.
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