The Turgenev home life was less than serene, as Sergey angered his wife through his infidelities and Varvana asserted unyielding control due to her wealth.
Educated by tutors until age nine, Turgenev was sent to preparatory school in Moscow in 1827, and from there moved to Moscow University six years later, at age sixteen. He refused to identify with his aristocratic heritage: he spoke Russian, which he had learned from the family servants, and was known for his liberal political views. In 1834, the year his father died, Turgenev transferred to the University of St. Petersburg, where his father and older brother had moved, and planned to enter academia as a professor. Studying under Gogol during that author's brief flirtation with a career teaching history, he also began to write poetry reflecting the Romantic idealism of English poet Lord Byron.
After graduating, Turgenev enrolled at the University of Berlin, where he fell in love with the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, studied the classics, and read widely in philosophy, the works of G. W. F. Hegel in particular. A frequent attendee at the salon of the city's Frolov family, he met some of the greatest German intellectuals of the day, among them explorer Alexander von Humboldt.
This is a free page. This page contains 198 words. This
biography contains 2,129 words (approx. 7 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Ivan Turgenev Access Pass.
