In compliance with our request, Ivan Sergyeevitch
Turgenieff has given his consent to our sharing now
with the readers of our journal, without delay, those
passing comments, thoughts, images which he had noted
down, under one impression or another of current existence,
during the last five years,—those which
belong to him personally, and those which pertain
to society in general. They, like many others,
have not found a place in those finished productions
of the past which have already been presented to the
world, and have formed a complete collection in themselves.
From among these the author has made fifty selections.
In the letter accompanying the pages which we are
now about to print, I. S. Turgenieff says, in conclusion:
“... Let not your reader peruse these ‘Poems
in Prose’ at one sitting; he will probably be
bored, and the book will fall from his hands.
But let him read them separately,—to-day
one, to-morrow another,—and then perchance
some one of them may leave some trace behind in his
soul....”
The pages have no general title; the author has written
on their wrapper: “Senilia—An
Old Man’s Jottings,”—but we
have preferred the words carelessly dropped by the
author in the end of his letter to us, quoted above,—“Poems
in Prose”—and we print the pages under
that general title. In our opinion, it fully
expresses the source from which such comments might
present themselves to the soul of an author well known
for his sensitiveness to the various questions of life,
as well as the impression which they may produce on
the reader, “leaving behind in his soul”
many things. They are, in reality, poems in spite
of the fact that they are written in prose. We
place them in chronological order, beginning with
the year 1878.
M. S.[68]
October 28, 1882.
(1878)
The last day of July; for a thousand versts round
about lies Russia, the fatherland.
The whole sky is suffused with an even azure; there
is only one little cloud in it, which is half floating,
half melting. There is no wind, it is warm ...
the air is like new milk!
Larks are carolling; large-cropped pigeons are cooing;
the swallows dart past in silence; the horses neigh
and munch, the dogs do not bark, but stand peaceably
wagging their tails.
And there is an odour of smoke abroad, and of grass,—and
a tiny whiff of tan,—and another of leather.—The
hemp-patches, also, are in their glory, and emit their
heavy but agreeable fragrance.
A deep but not long ravine. Along its sides,
in several rows, grow bulky-headed willows, stripped
bare at the bottom. Through the ravine runs a
brook; on its bottom tiny pebbles seem to tremble athwart
its pellucid ripples.—Far away, at the
spot where the rims of earth and sky come together,
is the bluish streak of a large river.
