A Sportsman's Sketches

A Sportsman's Sketches (Russian: Записки охотника; also known as The Hunting Sketches and Sketches from a Hunter's Album) is an 1852 collection of short stories by Ivan Turgenev. It was the first major writing that gained him recognition. He wrote this collection of short stories based on his own observations while hunting at his mother’s estate at Spasskoye, where he learned of the abuse of the peasants and the injustices of the Russian system that constrained them. The frequent abuse of Turgenev by his mother certainly had an effect on this work. The stories were first published singly in The Contemporary before appearing in 1852 in book form. He was about to give up writing when the first story, "Khor and Kalinich", was well received. This work is part of the Russian realist tradition in that the narrator is usually an uncommitted observer of the people he meets. The work as a whole actually led to Turgenev’s house arrest (part of the reason, the other being his epitaph to Nikolai Gogol) at Spasskoye. It was also partially responsible for the abolition of serfdom in Russia.

Story of two peasants one who is extremely thrifty, and the other an idealist, both of whom work for a petty landowner named Polutykin. This introduces the role of the narrator as the uncommitted observer. Turgenev at once appears as a writer and an artist but also a social reformer and activist. The separation of the two peasants plays a big role in later works by the author, as he explained in a speech given in 1860 where he talks about the dichotomy of his “Hamlet-like” and “Quixotic” characters. The main idea here though is displaying the intelligence of the peasants and the idiocy of their master. It is also perhaps one of his strongest arguments in favor of Westernization in Russia.

Story of the narrator’s hunter friend and a night they spend at a miller’s home. This is the first sketch he appears in. The man, Zverkov, gives the reader a clear idea of the injustices of serfdom, this being the main idea of this particular story. Nothing else of merit occurs.

Story of the narrator meeting and talking to two peasants at a little spring called Raspberry Water (which did exist and still exists in Russia). Here the narrator is very distant, akin to early Realist narrators, and learns of the self-deprivation peasants take upon themselves through the recollections of the old peasant named Foggy.

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