SOURCE: "Turgenieff as a Playwright," in The North American Review, Vol. 214, No. 790, September, 1921, pp. 393-400.

In the essay below, Sayler surveys Turgenev's dramatic output, stressing the realistic aspects of his work.

When the art and the literature of two countries are as widely separated by the barrier of languages expressed in dissimilar alphabets as those of Russia and America, it is small wonder that contemporary men and movements are often delayed in transit from one nation to the other, and that Moscow and Petrograd are as unaware today of the existence of Edgar Lee Masters and Vachel Lindsay as we are of Igor Severianin and Vassily Kamyensky. It is not so easy, though, to understand how after years of acquaintance with and admiration for a master of letters like Ivan Turgenieff, we can still be unconversant with the plays he wrote, and ignorant even of the fact that...