I'm still a little disoriented at this Amazon site. I'm not sure if this is the Edmonds translation circa 1960s or not. That is when I first read this novel and it is the copy I still own. The Penguin Classics version is the one I am referring to. I've written other critiques, thinking I was talking about Penguins, only to subsequently discover I was on the wrong entry. If this is indeed the Edmonds-Penguin edition, let me first refer the reader to the eloquent and unsurpassed introduction by Isaiah Berlin. It runs for 50+ pages, but is the most precise, uncorrupted look at mid-19th century Russian literature that I have come across. If you want a supreme overview by a great thinker on a great subject, go directly to this introduction, do not pass go. If you have even indirectly perused The New York Review of Books, you know who Berlin is, and how revered a thinker he is. Here he sums up pre-revolutionary Russia in a few pithy phrases. He also speaks for me and for those of my particular generation who are caught between ideologies, as the "liberals" in Turgenev's time were. On Turgenev, the author: "He went on believing - perhaps this was a relic of his Hegelian youth - that no issue was closed for ever, that every thesis must be weighed against its antithesis, that systems and absolutes of every kind - social aand political no less than religious - were a form of dangerous idolatry." This is a novel about a "superfluous" man who was trapped between ideologies in 19th centrury Russia, when the young "nihilists" were at odds with the old-line liberals. This is what makes the novel so relevant in any age. There are always going to be clashes between generations and between those who hope for the "de-struction" of an old edifice for an only partially imagined design for a new one. Turgenev presents us with perhaps the most truthful representation of this timeless, generational conflict. Russian literature is essentially a triumvirate : Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev. If I were a manager, I would probably have Turgenev bat leadoff. He gets his point across better than the other two, though he doesn't have the bat speed. Chekov or Pushkin (though not in the triumvirate) could bat second, depending on who was hot at the time. I would have a really difficult time deciding between Tolstoy or Dostoevsky for clean-up hitter. E-mail me for your votes. I would also like some reader feedaback as to the origin of the word "nihilst" or nihilism. I doubt sincerely whether Turgenev coined the term. It sounds more like Bakunin or Herzen to me. What are your thoughts on the subject?
