Customer Reviews

Rudin

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I found Rudin profoundly touching and an almost astonishing work for a novel so slender. Rarely in so few pages can a writer have illustrated his themes so emphatically and so artfully. Throughout Turgenev uses nature as a proxy for narrative description and as a result the novel has a very calm and controlled feel. The characters are bound by their differing natures and their development is shadowed by changes in the natural environment they find themselves in.
More importantly, to my mind, however is the way in which the character of Rudin exposes the central contradiction between a desire for truth and a desire for love. By his nature, as we discover, Rudin is unable to conquer love but is however able to remain true to his ideals, despite being unable to act upon them. To this extent Rudin is impotent, he is clear about what he wishes to achieve - to become a man of action - yet he is fundamentally unable to achieve such a goal. As such he is destined to remain unhappy. However, unlike others, he perceives this and so is able to remain truthful to his self and thus in contrast to those other characters in the novel that are destined to remain unhappy, as he too is destined, he at least discovers and embraces his true self and as such realises the higher being in him. A higher being so often alluded to by others.
In such a fashion Turgenev exposes this central dialectic beautifully. By positing Rudin amidst a decaying social setting and allowing his seemingly constant passage of self-discovery inadvertently to fuel the self-discovery of those who come into contact with him, Turgenev demonstrates how a synthesis between self-knowledge and self-sacrifice is essential before true love can be sown within one's soul. Rudin, by being so lucid regarding what he loves (truth), whilst simultaneously illustrating to all the futility of his love, shines a light upon the ready attainability of the loves of other characters. Thus those characters who sought to see in Rudin something approaching an ideal are shocked and provoked into attaining their own, real, ideals. It is only those who refused to see in Rudin anything but impotence, coldness and bluster who emerge unchanged characters at the novel's conclusion.
As of Rudin himself, his love (truth) is attained only at the cost of discovering that he is less a mighty oak and more a shallow tumbleweed (Rudin himself goes from using the Oak as an analogy for his feelings to that of a tumbleweed by the end of the novel). Perhaps it is this inevitable conclusion to Rudin's long search, the same search that befalls all of us, that provokes Rudin (in the Epilogue) to finally attain his ideal as a man of action and thus ensure that, against the greatest odds, his seed was not, after all, sown upon barren ground.

This is a simple parable, told within a beautiful story. We meet Rudin through several people's eyes and learn much more about him from the differences others see in him than we learn directly. It is facsinating to see the interplay between the man's fantasies and his facade. You are left with very profound and troubling unanswered questions about your own life and our tenuous connections to "reality." This is a powerful volume for anyone who is seriously and sincerely examining their own motives, especially if you are dissatisfied with your current conclusions.

I was very pleased to read this one for the second time. No doubt I was too young to appreciate its virtues twenty years ago. I look forward to reading more of his work, much of which will be new to me.

Rudin is the lead character in this short novel, which reads like a play set in mid nineteenth century Russia. He enters into a provincial society peopled by the usual array of grand dames, eccentrics, local radicals, and beautiful / eligible debutant-daughter, with whom he (believes he) falls in love.

Whilst the characters and setting is characteristic of many European novels of the time, the story takes an unexpected turn. Rudin is a fateful character, and one whose shallowness and egotism is exposed by the young daughter who he seduces. Turgenev manages to present Rudin as a sympathetic character albeit imbued with the resignation that he is a 'superfluous man' (cf. 'A Hero of Our Times' by Lermontov)

The book is well written and deserves a place in the canon of nineteenth century Russian novels . Particularly recommended for anyone who has read Fathers and Sons.

_Rudin_ is a good novel by Ivan Turgenev, but altogether non-essential, unless you want to read all of his works.

The character Rudin is a fortunate young man in 1860s Russia, a man around thirty years of age, in the prime of his life. He is very much a superfluous man, like the man Turgenev wrote of in his shorter story "A Superfluous Man." He is all talk and no action. He has high-minded ideals but can not transfer them into deeds.

I suppose Turgenev saw many young Russian men of his generation who served as the basis for Rudin, the character. Natalya, Rudin's love interest, at least has the fortitude to translate her ideals into actions, but she is offered fewer possibilities by Russian society. She comes off more sympathetically than the title character, but she is female, and therefore a minor character in a Turgenev work. I found her more interesting, and similar to the female main character in _Oblomov_ by Goncharov.

The political edge on this novel is not nearly so sharp as that on _Fathers and Sons_. Mostly this seems a personal and emotional novel, rather than a political novel. A student wanting a general grounding in the major novels of Russian Literature can probably skip _Rudin_. On the other hand, if you read _Fathers and Sons_ and found that book very rewarding, you may want to take a peek at _Rudin_, to see what another (earlier) novel by Turgenev is like.

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Turgenev has a way with words, and, if nothing else, his extremely pleasant writing style makes this (and any other of his works) worth reading. Additionally, the characters of this novel are truly memorable.

The most memorable character of all, however, is (unsurprisingly) Rudin. Throughout the novel, Turgenev paints Rudin as an intriguing, complex character who is prone to making sacrifices. These sacrifices, however, are often counter-productive and counter-intuitive. In a way, it often seems that Rudin is making decisions for no other purpose than self-destruction, and he leaves a wake of frustration and confusion in his path.

The short length of this novel prevents it from getting into the depth and complexity of some of the better works of 19th century Russia (including Turgenev's own Fathers and Sons). It is, nevertheless, a great character study that is highly worth reading.

Turgenev's first short novel takes place in a setting familiar from his dramas and indeed many of his later novels - a country house setting where a widowed society lady from St. Petersburg, Darya Mihailovna entertains local dignitaries and distinguished men of letters. Almost invariably, the setting is one where romance takes place, Turgenev thereby pitting the men against each other in ways that brings out their strength or lack of moral character.

In Rudin, it is Darya Mihailovna's daughter 17 year old Natalya who becomes the centre of the romantic entanglements that ensue when a new guest comes into the household, Dimitri Nikolaitch Rudin. Natalya is dazzled by the eloquence and wisdom of the man, who eclipses the empty pose, cynicism and 'bon mots' of the others, and Rudin comes to replace the rather dull and inarticulate Volintsev in her affections. Some of the men who have known Rudin in the past have doubts however about Rudin's strength of character and the conviction of his romantic intentions towards Natalya.

The majority of the novel then may seem rather lightweight, structured around a brief scarcely existent romance, featuring lots of ineffectual talking, discussion and gossip between society gentlemen on subjects of art, poetry, music, and romantic ideals - but the setting, the talk and the behaviour of the characters tells us rather more about the individuals than might be expected. Certainly, it's all very entertaining, and some wisdom is indeed dispensed amid much empty theorising and philosophising, but there appears to be no sincerity or willingness on the part of anyone to do anything but talk about it all.

Affairs of the heart are however Turgenev's speciality, and it is through their conduct with women that the author best manages to examine the essential character of Russian men. Not untypically - at least until he came to write his masterpiece Fathers and Sons - he finds something wanting in his leading men. In comparison to Volintsev, Lezhnyov, Pandalevsky and Pigasov, Rudin would appear to be an intellectual as well as a man of ideals and practicalities, but he proves - through his behaviour with Natalya - to be a man without conviction, sincerity, substance and more importantly a man without passion. As another reviewer here has commented, this isn't necessarily the fault of the young man, since like the others in this period before social reform, there is no outlet yet for his fine ideas.

All the same, while the subject is perfectly in keeping with Turgenev's usual themes, the ideas as they are expressed by the author in this slim novel are fairly lightweight and thin. Although there is some attempt here at using nature through meetings in gardens and allusions to branches on a oak tree as an expression of the inner lives of the characters, Turgenev would much more successfully bind his characters - of a greater variety of social classes moreover - with the very earth of Russia in his subsequent novel, Nest of the Gentry, and approach the reality of the underlying complexities of the dilemma faced by the individual in a progressive, modern world of social reform with a great deal more precision in Fathers and Sons.