Author: Ivan Turgenev
Translated by Constance Garnett
Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6902] [Yes,
we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This
file was first posted on February 10, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of the project gutenberg
EBOOK on the eve ***
Produced by Eric Eldred.
a Novel
IVAN TURGENEV
Translated from the Russian By Constance Garnett
[With an introduction by Edward Garnett]
This exquisite novel, first published in 1859, like
so many great works of art, holds depths of meaning
which at first sight lie veiled under the simplicity
and harmony of the technique. To the English
reader On the Eve is a charmingly drawn picture
of a quiet Russian household, with a delicate analysis
of a young girl’s soul; but to Russians it is
also a deep and penetrating diagnosis of the destinies
of the Russia of the fifties.
Elena, the Russian girl, is the central figure of
the novel. In comparing her with Turgenev’s
other women, the reader will remark that he is allowed
to come into closer spiritual contact with her than
even with Lisa. The successful portraits of women
drawn by men in fiction are generally figures for
the imagination to play on; however much that is told
to one about them, the secret springs of their character
are left a little obscure, but when Elena stands before
us we know all the innermost secrets of her character.
Her strength of will, her serious, courageous, proud
soul, her capacity for passion, all the play of her
delicate idealistic nature troubled by the contradictions,
aspirations, and unhappiness that the dawn of love
brings to her, all this is conveyed to us by the simplest
and the most consummate art. The diary (chapter
xvi.) that Elena keeps is in itself a masterly revelation
of a young girl’s heart; it has never been equalled
by any other novelist. How exquisitely Turgenev
reveals his characters may be seen by an examination
of the parts Shubin the artist, and Bersenyev the
student, play towards Elena. Both young men are
in love with her, and the description of their after
relations as friends, and the feelings of Elena towards
them, and her own self-communings are interwoven with
unfaltering skill. All the most complex and baffling
shades of the mental life, which in the hands of many
latter-day novelists build up characters far too thin
and too unconvincing, in the hands of Turgenev are
