Notes of a Hunter

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev 1818-1883 is a classic of Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century, the author of many significant works such as Rudin, A Nobleman's Nest, On the Eve, Fathers and Sons, A Month in the... Village, and First Love. Turgenev's family came from an ancient lineage of Tula nobility and was wealthy. The childhood of the future writer was spent in the estate of the village of Spasskoye-Lutovinovo in the Mtsensk district. Little Ivan was taught by governesses, and the French language, favored by his mother, was almost the main language in the house. This did not prevent him from falling in love with Russian literature; he began writing at the age of 15, and by 19 he had already composed about a hundred poems and poems. Turgenev received his education in private boarding schools for the nobility, and then at the Faculty of Philosophy of St. Petersburg University. In his works, the writer responded to all the events of the time: he was the first to embody the contradictory image of the personality of the new man - the nihilist, he realistically depicted the life of the people, assessed the changing role of women in society, and finally, he was the first to portray modest rural landscapes with such love. Even during his lifetime, Turgenev became the most read Russian writer in Germany, was popular in France and England, and introduced contemporary Russian prose to the Western reader, promoting it abroad. The collection that glorified him, Notes of a Hunter, consists of 25 short stories, which grew from one - The Ferret and Kalinich, published in the magazine Sovremennik. The editor added the subtitle From the Notes of a Hunter to it to attract the attention of readers, and this suggested the idea to Turgenev to create a cycle, the latent meaning of which was a struggle against an enemy, hated since childhood. This enemy bore the infamous name... serfdom. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin believed that Notes of a Hunter laid the foundation for a whole literature focused on the people and their needs. The series of sketches provided such a harsh and expressive picture of peasant life that after the book's release, the censorship official who allowed it to be printed was dismissed.