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Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev
Together with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev was one of the leading novelists of Russia's Golden Age and the first Russian writer to capture a Western audience. No less sensational than his novels was his personal life. For forty years, until the day he died, he was passionately devoted to the diva Pauline Viardot, following her and her husband around Europe and even living with them amicably at times as part of their household. What, then, did Turgenev mean by "love," the word at the core of his life and work? Robert Dessaix has had his own forty-year relationship with Turgenev, first as a student of Russian in both Australia and Russia, then as a teacher, and now as what he calls a close friend. In Twilight of Love, Dessaix has come to see Turgenev's life and work as an expression of a turning point in the history of love-the moment the Romantic became rational, love unraveled into sentiment and erotic feelings, and eros became a mere commodity.
275 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
January 18, 2012
I wondered, while I was reading this, what is was all about. Yes, it followed Dessaix's travels that followed Turgenov, but it was SO much more than that.
Dessaix' control over the English language is delicious, inventive and a pure joy to read.
This novel is not for everyone. If you want to read a story, avoid this. If you want to marvel at how well our language can be used then try this one. Find a quiet place where you can read slowly. This is a piece of writing to be savoured.
Dessaix' control over the English language is delicious, inventive and a pure joy to read.
This novel is not for everyone. If you want to read a story, avoid this. If you want to marvel at how well our language can be used then try this one. Find a quiet place where you can read slowly. This is a piece of writing to be savoured.
February 28, 2011
I regret having loaned this from a friend .. I wish it was my copy so that I could mark it, make notes on the side etc. This book is a memoir of travels of the author who sets out to retrace some of the author (Ivan Turgenev's) [ast haunts to see if he can get some of the fellings and moivations that the famous russian writer felt/experienced, who was around in the mid 19th century. Throughout the book, Dessaix writes of Turgenev's expereince and view of love (he loved for most pf his life, until he died a married woman and was friends with her husband but never went beyond just loving her, there is no evdience of there being any physical aspect of their relationship). He also talks of his views of death, civilsation, Russia, Australia, France, Germany, friendship, writing and more.
This book is a very quiet book, no real action or even drama for that fact, just a observation of life now and then of Dessaix and Turgenev.
I could only read a few pages at a time ... after ecah reading, I needed ot go away and think about what I had read.
This book is a very quiet book, no real action or even drama for that fact, just a observation of life now and then of Dessaix and Turgenev.
I could only read a few pages at a time ... after ecah reading, I needed ot go away and think about what I had read.
September 30, 2008
Robert Dessaix meditates on Turgenev, and on his take on what's considered "the twilight of love". Very personal - as most Dessaix works are - and eminently readable. Great thoughts about the role of romance (as opposed to sex) in life, as well as interesting takes on belonging/nationality. Lovely stuff - truly one of Australia's best.
October 14, 2019
Ambling along in Melbourne, I found a signed copy of Twilight of Love in one of those swap libraries that people attach to their fences. This copy had never been read. I confess to being a fan of Robert Dessaix. Mainly due to my memories of the time when he hosted the Book Show on ABC radio. Ahh...those were the days. I admired his intelligence and archly incisive asides. He sometimes writes as he speaks - which is good because I could hear his voice. I chose to read this book at the same time as reading Wuthering Heights so (in my mind) the two are slightly interwoven. Both are about forms of love. It was an easy and enjoyable read, though a somewhat directionless, amble though time and place. But I love an amble and was happy to follow him around. As best I recall, Dessaix's final words in the book were that he should re-read Turgenev. This baffled me a little. He gave no real clues as to why Turgenev was so interesting. The thread that bound the amble to some kind of line was Dessaix's quest for an understanding of the kind of love that meant so much to Turgenev. Dessaix seemed to imagine that the answer might emerge as a dimension of place, but he is constantly disappointed and finds nothing. Then, at the end of the book, he remembers that he had promised to find something and quickly tries to cover himself with a fairly banal set of distinctions between sex, love and time stopping passion. I say banal because for me his conclusion was neither profound nor particularly interesting. He didn't open any doors that would encourage me to want to read Turgenev. Quite the reverse. However, as I mentioned, it was an enjoyable amble without destination. In Twilight of Love Dessaix is a flâneur and I don't think he would mind me saying that.
February 2, 2020
A 'delicious complicity'. This is Dessaix's peregrinations between Baden-Baden, Paris, and Russia, to the places where the 19th-C Russian author Turgenev lived, visited, wrote his novels in; where he might have had platonic trysts with the great love of his life, the married Pauline Viardot. Dessaix muses on the notion of love as it might have meant to Turgenev, through his characters and attaching motivations to his intense attachment to Viardot. Dessaix visits these places with Turgenev plaques, both official and non-official, to conjure Turgenev's character, with its manifold motivations, into being. Hoping to 'see' Turgenev, Dessaix himself feels 'seen' by him -- coming to know a past lived experience collapses the past and present.
A hybrid travelogue, memoir, literary criticism, and extended essay, there were some uneven patches for me, but mostly I was riven to know if Love was indeed in its twilight in the 19thC, and what remains of it today. As with Russia, there are new belief systems and hoardings that structure our world, but Dessaix renews his belief, and to a certain extent mine, in the probability of love.
A hybrid travelogue, memoir, literary criticism, and extended essay, there were some uneven patches for me, but mostly I was riven to know if Love was indeed in its twilight in the 19thC, and what remains of it today. As with Russia, there are new belief systems and hoardings that structure our world, but Dessaix renews his belief, and to a certain extent mine, in the probability of love.
February 4, 2017
I chose to read this book because I always enjoy Robert Dessaix's writing, rather than through any particular interest in Turgenev. I was not disappointed, loved the style & learnt quite a bit about Turgenev along the way as well.
December 13, 2022
In this book, which combines biography with travelogue, Dessaix traces the peregrinations of the 19th-century author Ivan Turgenev in Russia, Baden-Baden, and Paris, up to the time of his death in Bougival, France in 1883. It contains a good deal of interesting information about Turgenev’s life and works.
It also details his (face it) weird relationship with Pauline Viardot, an aging but acclaimed opera singer, with whom he more or less lived for long periods (platonically or not no one seems to know), along with Pauline’s husband Louis. Dessaix is forced to repeatedly argue, ‘perhaps this is not as strange as it seems,’ in describing the ins and outs of this decades-long relationship. Ultimately Turgenev died in her arms.
I could have done without Dessaix’s personal musings on his experiences in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Why include them? “[Moscow]…was never really his city…. I knew in my bones that I would hear no echoes of Turgenev’s voice.” Because they would not have sold separately, absent the book on Turgenev.
It also details his (face it) weird relationship with Pauline Viardot, an aging but acclaimed opera singer, with whom he more or less lived for long periods (platonically or not no one seems to know), along with Pauline’s husband Louis. Dessaix is forced to repeatedly argue, ‘perhaps this is not as strange as it seems,’ in describing the ins and outs of this decades-long relationship. Ultimately Turgenev died in her arms.
I could have done without Dessaix’s personal musings on his experiences in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Why include them? “[Moscow]…was never really his city…. I knew in my bones that I would hear no echoes of Turgenev’s voice.” Because they would not have sold separately, absent the book on Turgenev.
January 4, 2018
I read this while on holidays in Russia. I haven't read much Turgenev, just one novel and three short stories, but I love 19th century Russian literature in general. This book began with a quiet voice and I appreciated the sophistication and culture evident in it - though it took a bit of work with the various words and idioms in other languages - and it reminded me of my aspirational youth. The name-dropping certainly made me want to read more and I felt very deficient and 'barbaric'. As it went on though, I became emotionally engaged, firstly (oddly enough) by the nihilism and secondly, and overwhelmingly, by the real, theretofore hidden, motif of the book. I cried for about an hour while reading the final pages. It was really beautiful and one of the truest things I've ever read. It really touched my heart.
January 13, 2018
Robert Dessaix is a beautiful writer. I have read several Turgenev novels, but I was introduced to him intimately by reading this book, I feel like Turgenev and I could have been friends. We have a lot to talk about.
Dessaix explores how Turgenev was searching for meaning in true intimacy, "possession AND surrender, and therefore fusion", when life is hopeless and will end badly. It's peppered with beautiful Russian words like примирил (bring together and give peace), and has excerpts from Turgenev's tender and heartbreaking letters to Pauline, the love of his entire life.
Dessaix explores how Turgenev was searching for meaning in true intimacy, "possession AND surrender, and therefore fusion", when life is hopeless and will end badly. It's peppered with beautiful Russian words like примирил (bring together and give peace), and has excerpts from Turgenev's tender and heartbreaking letters to Pauline, the love of his entire life.
September 14, 2022
This is the story of Ivan Turgenev's travels and this is a moving and melancholy exursion to Baden-Baden, France and Russia where he wrote his best work.. It is the story of Turgenev's love for the opera singer Pauline Viardot and her family and how he joined her family and moved to live near to the family.
An unusual book and an inventive portrayal of the writer's life andlegacy - a travel book,biography and memoir in one.An excellent and poigant read
If you more facts about his home and work read Mud and Stars by Sara Wheeler and The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop
An unusual book and an inventive portrayal of the writer's life andlegacy - a travel book,biography and memoir in one.An excellent and poigant read
If you more facts about his home and work read Mud and Stars by Sara Wheeler and The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop
October 27, 2017
Interesting account of Dessaix's fascination with Turgenev. He doesn't really sell him as a writer all that well actually, but the cultural details of the period are fascinating, particularly when Turgenev's life is compared to Dessaix's experience of modern Baden-Baden, Paris, and pre-and post-Glasnost Russia.
December 18, 2018
One of my less favourite offerings from Robert Dessaix. Having said that I love the writing style that the author employs, it is at the same time so easy to read and so rich. Although I have little interest in Turgenev the author's musings on his life, his enduring love for a married women, the places he lived made the journey enjoyable.
June 27, 2020
I really really enjoy reading anything by Robert Dessaix, and this book, about his relationship with the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, is no exception. A masterful account of coming to terms with an enigmatic figure who lived and loved - in a very unconventional way - well over a century ago. If only it was longer!
March 13, 2023
I always enjoy Robert Dessaix books. I love his writing style. The premise of this book is following in the steps of the author Turgenev as he moved between Russia, France and Germany. Dessaix also travelled to important places within Turgenev’s books. As always with Dessaix the travel and reflection on Turgenev’s books is an opportunity to contemplate the important things in life. A good read.
June 25, 2023
I was captivated by Twilight of Love. My goodness Robert Dessaix writes beautifully. I particularly enjoyed how Dessaix brought the past into the present. I enjoyed reading about the places and the people. I could feel it.
November 30, 2024
Beautifully written and thoroughly enjoyable musing on life, love and literature. My third book by Dessaix, and I am hooked on his style.
I read Turgenev in my mid-twenties in Polish, and four decades later, Dessaix has convinced me to re-read him again through a different prism.
I read Turgenev in my mid-twenties in Polish, and four decades later, Dessaix has convinced me to re-read him again through a different prism.
April 24, 2019
Readable intro to Turgenev.
May 26, 2019
Clear and profound meditations on the nature of Turgenev's love, and of love in general.
October 28, 2019
3.5 ⭐️
January 29, 2011
Hobart, the city where I live part time, 'provincial and lustreless'?????
The author has also chosen to live in Hobs, and surely Dessaix and lustreless in the same sentence is an oxymoron. To be fair, most mentions of Dessaix' adopted city/island are complimentary, and that it is provincial there is no doubt - but lustreless? I suppose it depends on criteria. On a sparkling day like this with yachts glistening over the Derwent and Wellington brooding above, to me, is lustrous. Looking up at the interiors of the Theatre Royal has the same effect, as does wandering the colonial galleries at TMAG. Walking around Battery Point on a glorious spring day I think cannot be beat, at least in the antipodes. I know the book preceded MONA, but I wonder if its establishment would encourage Dessaix to change his view. We surely lack the high culture of a Paris or Moscow, but observing the verdantly bush covered hills all around I know where I'd rather be domiciled.
But this book is more than just one statement about my pocket handkerchief-sized capital city, and given that I consider myself to be a moderately intelligent being, I am still awed by Dessaix. He surely is super-intelligent, he simply 'knows' so much on his given topics - here namely the life, loves, works and times of Turgenev, a name I first encountered when a mate decided the Russian literary giant's revolutionary connections should be the subject of his thesis. I doubt though that even the great man himself would flaunt such wonderful language as the noveau-Hobartian does in this book - it is a delightful read, from this point of view, from cover to cover. It does not matter that in no way does it convince me to work my way through even one of Turgenev's oeuvre, nor sashay off to Paree or great Russian cities. Dessaix' written language shines off the page with magical words, foreign and exotic,adding, dare I say it, lustre.
Through these pages the author meditates on and ruminates about the nature of love, coping with impending death and the joys of cultured friends in European locales. A highlight was the contrasting of life in communist Russia and the hybrid that exists today.
Although I'll not seek out his subject matter, I'll surely seek out more Dessaix.
The author has also chosen to live in Hobs, and surely Dessaix and lustreless in the same sentence is an oxymoron. To be fair, most mentions of Dessaix' adopted city/island are complimentary, and that it is provincial there is no doubt - but lustreless? I suppose it depends on criteria. On a sparkling day like this with yachts glistening over the Derwent and Wellington brooding above, to me, is lustrous. Looking up at the interiors of the Theatre Royal has the same effect, as does wandering the colonial galleries at TMAG. Walking around Battery Point on a glorious spring day I think cannot be beat, at least in the antipodes. I know the book preceded MONA, but I wonder if its establishment would encourage Dessaix to change his view. We surely lack the high culture of a Paris or Moscow, but observing the verdantly bush covered hills all around I know where I'd rather be domiciled.
But this book is more than just one statement about my pocket handkerchief-sized capital city, and given that I consider myself to be a moderately intelligent being, I am still awed by Dessaix. He surely is super-intelligent, he simply 'knows' so much on his given topics - here namely the life, loves, works and times of Turgenev, a name I first encountered when a mate decided the Russian literary giant's revolutionary connections should be the subject of his thesis. I doubt though that even the great man himself would flaunt such wonderful language as the noveau-Hobartian does in this book - it is a delightful read, from this point of view, from cover to cover. It does not matter that in no way does it convince me to work my way through even one of Turgenev's oeuvre, nor sashay off to Paree or great Russian cities. Dessaix' written language shines off the page with magical words, foreign and exotic,adding, dare I say it, lustre.
Through these pages the author meditates on and ruminates about the nature of love, coping with impending death and the joys of cultured friends in European locales. A highlight was the contrasting of life in communist Russia and the hybrid that exists today.
Although I'll not seek out his subject matter, I'll surely seek out more Dessaix.
November 8, 2014
What elegant sentences Dessaix writes as he explores the houses Turgenev lived in, in Baden Baden, Paris, and Moscow, among others. Dessaix is intimately acquainted with the works of the great Russian writer, his biography, and his relationships with other great Russian writers of his age: Dosteovsky, Tolstoy and Gogol.
As Dessaix travels in a kind of a pilgrimage to the physical spaces Turgenev inhabited when he wrote Smoke, Torrents of Spring, Fathers and Sons, and a Month in the Country, he develops a theory of love, the history of love if there can be such a thing, or the underpinnings of love over time.
The ability to love is informed by how we imagine our ability to transcend. When people believe in God, love can be a form of worship, the beloved human standing in for the divine, or becoming divine. When life is reduced to mere physical experiences, removing the spiritual and never acknowledging that humans consist of souls, love is reduced to lust and affection.
How diminished we all are in return. Dessaix does not dwell on this but it makes the book worth reading because after all how many descriptions of museums devoted to long dead great personages-- their furniture, their desks, dishes and gardens-- can we care about before it grows tiresome and monotonous.
Dessaix is good company. His travel companions vary from a wife to a Buddhist monk to a taxi driver. All are excellent sounding boards for the writer in pursuit of a writer's inner being, not his soul exactly, but his love of life and love for the woman he pursued his whole life even though she was married.
As Dessaix travels in a kind of a pilgrimage to the physical spaces Turgenev inhabited when he wrote Smoke, Torrents of Spring, Fathers and Sons, and a Month in the Country, he develops a theory of love, the history of love if there can be such a thing, or the underpinnings of love over time.
The ability to love is informed by how we imagine our ability to transcend. When people believe in God, love can be a form of worship, the beloved human standing in for the divine, or becoming divine. When life is reduced to mere physical experiences, removing the spiritual and never acknowledging that humans consist of souls, love is reduced to lust and affection.
How diminished we all are in return. Dessaix does not dwell on this but it makes the book worth reading because after all how many descriptions of museums devoted to long dead great personages-- their furniture, their desks, dishes and gardens-- can we care about before it grows tiresome and monotonous.
Dessaix is good company. His travel companions vary from a wife to a Buddhist monk to a taxi driver. All are excellent sounding boards for the writer in pursuit of a writer's inner being, not his soul exactly, but his love of life and love for the woman he pursued his whole life even though she was married.
January 1, 2015
Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev are three giants of 19th-century Russian literature. Although Turgenev doesn't have the profile in the west of the other two, he is my personal favourite - less likely to grab you by the metaphorical lapels and yell in your face, perhaps, but with a great deal more imaginative sympathy. Robert Dessaix's book on Turgenev, his travels and loves took a while to win me over - for my taste, the first half of the book contains a deal too little Turgenev and a deal too much "I'm Robert and even though I live in Tasmania I have cool and interesting friends all over Europe" - but once those friends recede into the background, the latter half of the book becomes a moving and fascinating study of Turgenev, his life, to a lesser extent his work, and the nature of love in Turgenev's day and today. Worth sticking with.
December 4, 2010
Robert Dessaix
in wikipedia: "Dessaix' latest long work, Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev defies genre characterisation, interweaving a personal travelogue with a biography of Turgenev. It was published in 2004. It takes inspiration from his doctoral thesis on Turgenev and the Soviet Union, as well as Alain de Botton's works on travel, art and philosophy"
This a travel book/memoir, but most of all a reflexion about love in all its guises.
in wikipedia: "Dessaix' latest long work, Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev defies genre characterisation, interweaving a personal travelogue with a biography of Turgenev. It was published in 2004. It takes inspiration from his doctoral thesis on Turgenev and the Soviet Union, as well as Alain de Botton's works on travel, art and philosophy"
This a travel book/memoir, but most of all a reflexion about love in all its guises.
September 23, 2013
Sim, eu tinha algumas expectativas em relação a este livro, afinal é do Robert Dessaix de "Corfu" e de "Cartas de Veneza", mas na verdade fica uns furos abaixo. Por vezes parece um romance, outras uma biografia e outras ainda uma peça jornalística. Isto por si só não é problema, mas não ajuda a que alguém que não seja fã de Turguéviev se consiga concentrar.
March 20, 2012
I was present at the Byron Bay Writer's Festival when Robert read out parts of this book. I decided to buy it and he has autographed my copy. But...I just couldn't get through it!! His writing was fine and he has obviously researched Turgenev's life. I just didn't find it as fascinating a subject as the writer did. I have it in my collection for anyone who would like to have it for free.
July 1, 2008
Enjoyable but light memoir about a lifelong literary interest married with travelogue to the points of biographical interest.
August 8, 2009
I just don't know what to think about this guy. He's very strange. The book is interesting enough though. Pretty good travel writing.
December 7, 2014
Goodreads rating 78
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews