Spring Torrents

Torrents of Spring

US edition, 1906 (publ. Farrar, Straus and Cudahy)
Author	Ivan Turgenev
Original title	Вешние воды
Country	Russia
Language	Russian
Genre	Fiction
Publisher	First published in Herald of Europe
Publication date	1872
Published in English	1906
Media type	Print (Hardcover)

Torrents of Spring, also known as Spring Torrents (Russian: Вешние воды), is a novel written by Ivan Turgenev during 1870 and 1871 when he was in his fifties. The story centers around a young Russian landowner named Dimitry Sanin who falls deliriously in love for the first time while visiting the German city of Frankfurt. It is widely held as one Turgenev's greatest novels as well as being highly autobiographical in nature.

Despite its fictional overlay, Torrents of Spring is inspired by the events of Turgenev's life during his 1838-1841 tour of the German States.

Although Fathers and Sons remains Turgenev's most famous novel, Torrents of Spring, is significant in its revealing of the author's life, thoughts, and most intimate emotions.

According to Turgenev's biographer Leonard Schapiro, the character of Gemma Roselli was inspired by an incident which took place while the future novelist was visiting Frankfurt in 1840. A young woman "of extraordinary beauty suddenly emerged from a tea-room to plead for help in reviving her brother, who had fainted." But, unlike Gemma, the young woman was Jewish rather than Italian and, unlike Sanin, Turgenev left Frankfurt that same night without getting to know her further.

The character of Maria Nikolaevna Polozova is believed to have had two models.

The first was Turgenev's mother, Varvara Petrovna Turgeneva. According to Schapiro, Varvara Petrovna subjected her husband, her son, her servants, and her husband's serfs to systematic physical, emotional, and verbal abuse. All of this left permanent emotional scars upon her son and caused him to always gravitate towards abusive relationships.

The second model is believed to have been Eleonora Petersen, the first wife of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev, with whom Turgenev "conceived some kind of romantic attachment" during his 1838 voyage from St. Petersburg to Lübeck. At the time, Eleonora was "returning to Munich with her children" and "died the following year". According to Schapiro, Turgenev's "correspondence with his mother suggests that he was in love with" Eleonora, "or fancied himself to be so, but that is as much as we know."