The Diary of a Superfluous Man, and Other Stories

Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich, 1818-1883Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.3
Word count
440K words
Chapters
44

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Fate and FortuneHumanistic CareSuperfluous ManComplex HumanityPsychological InsightSelf-Reflection

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Diary of a Superfluous Man, and Other Stories by Ivan Sergeevich TurgenevAuthor: Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich, 1818-1883,Language: English, Class: PG: Language and Literatures: Slavic (including Russian), Languages and Literature, Release Date: Oct 27, 2012

Editor's review

Turgenev's The Diary of a Superfluous Man, and Other Stories is an important entry point for understanding the "superfluous man" figure in Russian literature. The novella of the same name, written in diary form, follows a dying man looking back on his life with self-mockery and melancholy; the tone is restrained yet edged, weaving together individual powerlessness, misplaced love, and social stagnation into a texture that is both lyrically gloomy and soberly analytical. The other stories in the collection continue the author's interest in the subtle recesses of human nature, with clean narrative and finely detailed psychological portraiture that often unexpectedly exposes characters' self-deception and weakness. The Project Gutenberg public-domain English edition gives readers direct access to the original text and serves well as an introductory selection to Turgenev's short fiction, as well as a companion read to A Sportsman's Sketches for observing his transition from social sketch to psychological depth. Readers might slow down, attend to shifts in the diary narrator's tone, and notice how the author uses everyday detail to carry the mood of an era. Those interested in nineteenth-century Russian literature, diary fiction, or the study of character psychology will find a text here worth revisiting.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the novella of the same name first to grasp the self-mocking tone of the "superfluous man," then read the other stories and compare the characters' situations.
  2. Keep a pen to mark shifts in the narrator's tone, and after finishing, return to these places to see how they reveal the character's psychology.
  3. Read alongside selections from A Sportsman's Sketches to observe Turgenev's shift from social sketch to psychological depth.
  4. When reading the English original, don't look up every word; read through first to grasp the tone, then handle difficult sentences on a second pass.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44

FAQ

What kind of person does "superfluous man" refer to in Turgenev's writing? It usually refers to an educated intellectual figure capable of reflection but lacking the will to act and a sense of place. The novella of the same name presents such a figure in diary form, with self-mockery, hesitation, and emotional dislocation; its point is not to offer a definition but to let readers feel his spiritual predicament and the atmosphere of the era.
Is this edition suitable for reading the English original directly? This is a Project Gutenberg public-domain English ebook, in a nineteenth-century English translation. It is generally readable, though some sentence structures and word choices are difficult for non-native readers. Read through first to grasp the tone, then revisit difficult passages; don't look up every word.
Do I need to know Russian literary history before reading this collection? Not necessarily. The stories move through character psychology and everyday detail, so you can enter them directly. To better understand the "superfluous man" lineage, you can read a literary-history overview afterward, or read alongside works by Pushkin, Lermontov, and others.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich, 1818-1883 Author

Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich (1818–1883), was a nineteenth-century Russian novelist. Because the available records are limited, his early life and education cannot be described in detail here. What can be confirmed is his achievement as the author of several widely influential works; this collection holds thirty-five of his books, including Fathers and Sons (also known as Fathers and Children), the second volume of A Sportsman's Sketches, and the novels On the Eve, Rudin, and Asya. His writing is noted for delicate psychological portrayal and a restrained, concise style, and for showing social change through the interplay of personal feeling and social reality, with characters often caught between ideal and actuality. These works hold an important place in Russian literature and the European novel tradition, and retain lasting value for readers seeking to understand nineteenth-century Russian society and the spiritual character of its educated classes.