The Rendezvous

by Ivan Turgenev, Herman Bernstein (Translator)

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Russia, Fiction, Classics, Short Stories

24 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 2011

About the author

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (Cyrillic: Иван Сергеевич Тургенев) was a novelist, poet, and dramatist, and now ranks as one of the towering figures of Russian literature. His major works include the short-story collection A Sportsman’s Sketches (1852) and the novels Rudin (1856), Home of the Gentry (1859), On the Eve (1860), and Fathers and Sons (1862).

These works offer realistic, affectionate portrayals of the Russian peasantry and penetrating studies of the Russian intelligentsia who were attempting to move the country into a new age. His masterpiece, Fathers and Sons, is considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.

Turgenev was a contemporary with Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. While these wrote about church and religion, Turgenev was more concerned with the movement toward social reform in Russia.

Reviews

[Keely]

No one writes nature prose like Turgenev, period. No one writes bittersweet love like Turgenev, period. No one writes like Turgenev, period.

[Janith Pathirage]

You take a long walk in an old pine forest , fall asleep against a giant pine tree and wake up to witness a heartbreaking rendezvous between 2 lovers. This is Ivan Turgenev at his best. There are quite few authors who can blend their stories with the surroundings as good as Turgenev. What a blessed mind !.

[Dan]

Masterfully eliciting heartbreak

In this brief work, the author fills up his creation with enough reality to draw us into it and to pierce our hearts with the exposed heartbreak of a young woman who had entrusted her all into the hands of a cad.

[Oksana Osinienė]

Рассказ «Свидание» из цикла «Записки охотника» Ивана Тургенева заставил меня задуматься о глубокой несправедливости крепостного строя. Больше всего трогает судьба Арины — девушки, у которой даже не было права выбирать, кого любить и за кого выходить замуж.

Господа распоряжаются судьбами крестьян так, словно речь идёт не о живых людях, а о вещах. Им удобно — значит, так и будет. Никто не думает о человеческом счастье, о чувствах, о боли. Арина могла бы выйти замуж по любви — за лакея, которого действительно любила. Она могла бы продолжать работать горничной и жить пусть скромной, но честной и счастливой жизнью. Но её судьбу решили за неё.

Особенно горько от того, что в этой истории нет громкого зла — только привычная, узаконенная несправедливость. Людей ломают не криком, а равнодушием. И от этого становится ещё тяжелее.

Этот рассказ — напоминание о том, как важно право выбора. Без него нет ни достоинства, ни настоящего счастья.

[James]

Turgenev is wonderfully descriptive in his scene's and work, very imaginative.

[Gretchen]

Viktor Alexandrich is such a tool

[Courtney Jenison]

Beautifully heartbreaking!

[Isaac Lambert]

ah, the innocence of youth (and of being a bystander, who hasn’t seen something similar!)

[Laurence]

For such a short story, a micro story even, there is a lot to draw from here.

The characters are extremely believably painted and yet it is like an impressionist painting at the same time.

She has imagined the very best possible picture of him.

[Susan Molloy]

✔️Published in 1907.

Lovely, lovely. I so greatly enjoyed this Nature writing style of Ivan Turgenev.

I was sitting in a birch grove in autumn, near the middle of September. . . .
It had been drizzling ever since morning; occasionally the sun shone warmly;—the weather was changeable. . . .
one should have seen how brightly these birches flushed in the sun when its rays suddenly appeared gliding and flashing through the dense net of the thin branches which had just been washed around by the sparkling rain. . . .
Not a single bird was heard; all had found shelter, and were silent; only rarely the mocking voice of the bluebird sang out like a little steel bell.

The reader can really get lost in his writings.

🟣Kindle version.

[Trounin]

Прошли годы писательства, когда не имелось очевидного понимания, зачем это делалось. Теперь Тургенев творил в полную силу, зная, на каких моментах следует акцентировать внимание. Теперь и пение певцов оказывалось способным взволновать душу. Такое же воздействие оказывало наблюдение за сценой несчастной любви, когда ожидание лучшего безвозвратно разрушалось. На этом цикл о записках охотника получил надежду на развитие.

(c) Trounin