Status Updates From A Sportsman's Sketches Work...

… narrator’s perspective. His ostensible cover- sleeping in a spare room lent believability to some candid conversations and a slightly suspenseful bit of entertainment, as well. The characters in the vignette also felt alive and exciting in a way I had felt few times so far in the vignettes. Nikolai Yermeitch as a stout, short and round fellow really stuck with me and made me more attentive during the scene.

In the Counting House, the narrator finds himself seeking shelter in a small village; but he settles in a spare room of the counting house, as he mistook it for a boarding house. In this spare room, he overhears quite a lot: detailed descriptions of ridiculous bureaucracy among the serfs, bribery of head clerks so merchants can secure certain prices, and the sad story of a peasant in love. I appreciated the…

The piety of the peasantry has taken center stage over the last few sketches. Most recently, Kassyan of Fair Springs, a small and eccentric old man, demonstrates an absolute and blind faith in God, no matter how irrational; and in that blind faith, he finds purpose and propagates relative good for the people around him.

In the prairie, under the stars, a group of peasant boys exchange village superstitions; the conclude that all men must meet their fate in due time. It’s a wonder that superstition and folklore can gently guide us in conversations about death. No matter our age, the end seems just enough removed in fiction.

…his dog; with an understanding that he owes it nothing and yet that it should serve him. In fact, Yermolai’s own master treats him this way, but maybe even worse than Yermolai treats his dog.

In these stories, Turgenev also gives a great deal of wonderful imagery found out in the woods. Looking forward to more!

… the miller’s wife is aloof toward his serf, and when she humbly begs him to let her marry, he feels personally offended for her ingratitude toward him and his wife. Her interests are not considered; he feeds her and waters her like a dog, and so that’s how he sees her. And Turgenev masterfully parallels this inhumane treatment of the miller’s wife with a depiction of the way Yermolai, another serf, treats..

Turgenev spends a great deal of the first two sketches showing the sensibilities of the serfs and their relations with their landed masters. Really revolutionary during that time. These accounts are interesting and heartfelt, and what comes through most immediately is the second-class characterization with which the landed class regards the serfs. In Yermolai and the Miller’s Wife, the former master of…