A Month in the Country: A Comedy in Five Acts (Classics) - Softcover

Berlin, Isaiah; Turgenev, Ivan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014044436X ISBN 13: 9780140444360

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1983

Synopsis

"In my opinion ...every love, happy as well as unhappy, is real disaster when you give yourself over to it entirely." This heart-felt sentiment expressed by Turgenev's unfortunate character, Rakitin, sums up the central predicament of this, Turgenev's most celebrated play, completed in 1850 during the period of his extensive travels abroad. Probably drawn from his experiences of frustration and unhappiness at the hands of the famous Pauline Viardot, "A Month in the Country" explores the complexities of that most universal of themes, the eternal love triangle, and transforms what could be termed an almost hackneyed subject into a brilliant tragi-comedy. With his fresh and subtle play of paradox and a new psychological penetration into character that anticipates the theatre of Chekhov, Turgenev creates a dramatic "month" which surely realizes Henry James' evaluation of the writer as "beautiful genius".

About this title

About the Author:

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born in 1818 in the province of Oryol. After the family had moved to Moscow in 1827 he entered St Petersburg University where he studied philosophy. When he was nineteen he published his first poems and went to the University of Berlin. After two years he returned to Russia and took his degree at the University of Moscow. After 1856 he lived mostly abroad, and he became the first Russian writer to gain a wide reputation in Europe. He wrote many novels, plays, short stories and novellas, of which First Love (1860) is the most famous. He died in Paris in 1883.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1983
• ISBN 10: 014044436X
• ISBN 13: 9780140444360
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128