[Footnote A: “Fathers and Sons.”
Translated from the Russian by Eugene Schuyler.
New York 1867.]
The French and German translations of M. Turgenieff’s
works are excellent. From the French versions
of M. Delaveau, M. Xavier Marmier, M. Prosper Merimee,
M. Viardot, and several others, a very good idea may
be formed by the general reader of M. Turgenieffs merits.
For my own part, I wish cordially to thank the French
and the German translators of the Dvoryanskoe Gnyezdo
for the assistance their versions rendered me while
I was preparing the present translation of that story.
The German version, by M. Paul Fuchs,[A] is wonderfully
literal. The French version, by Count Sollogub
and M.A. de Calonne, which originally appeared in
the Revue Contemporaine, without being quite
so close, is also very good indeed.[B]
[Footnote A: Das adelige Nest. Von I.S.
Turgenieff. Aus dem Russicher ubersetzt von Paul
Fuchs. Leipzig, 1862.]
[Footnote B: Une Nichee de Gentilshommes.
Paris, 1862]
I, too, have kept as closely as I possibly could to
the original. Indeed, the first draft of the
translation was absolutely literal, regardless of
style or even idiom. While in that state, it was
revised by the Russian friend who assisted me in my
translation of Krilofs Fables—M. Alexander
Onegine—and to his painstaking kindness
I am greatly indebted for the hope I venture to entertain
that I have not “traduced” the author
I have undertaken to translate. It may be as
well to state that in the few passages in which my
version differs designedly from the ordinary text
of the original, I have followed the alterations which
M. Turgenieff made with his own hand in the copy of
the story on which I worked, and the title of the story
has been altered to its present form with his consent.
I may as well observe also, that while I have inserted
notes where I thought their presence unavoidable,
I have abstained as much as possible from diverting
the reader’s attention from the story by obtrusive
asterisks, referring to what might seem impertinent
observations at the bottom of the page. The Russian
forms of name I have religiously preserved, even to
the extent of using such a form as Ivanich, as well
as Ivanovich, when it is employed by the author.
INNER TEMPLE, June 1, 1869.
A beautiful spring day was drawing to a close.
High aloft in the clear sky floated small rosy clouds,
which seemed never to drift past, but to be slowly
absorbed into the blue depths beyond.
At an open window, in a handsome mansion situated
in one of the outlying streets of O., the chief town
of the government of that name—it was in
the year 1842—there were sitting two ladies,
the one about fifty years old, the other an old woman
of seventy.
