SOURCE: Briggs, A. D. P. “One Man and His Dogs: An Anniversary Tribute to Ivan Turgenev.” Irish Slavonic Studies 14 (1993): 1-20.

In the following essay, Briggs examines the importance of dogs in Turgenev's life and literature.

Turgenev's Dogs

I wish to honour the name of Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev in a curious way—though it is one which certainly would have appealed to him—by drawing attention to his interest in dogs.¹ Dogs played a significant role for him, both in real life and in literature. He grew up surrounded by them at Spasskoye; one of his earliest recorded memories is of going out hunting with his father at the age of nine or ten and observing the behaviour of a bird defending its young against their dog, Trezor. This incident was recorded twice by Turgenev, in the autobiographical sketch entitled ‘The Quail’ (1880) and in an earlier Poem in Prose...