Spring Torrents

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

Rating 4.2
Word count
297K words
Chapters
30

Tags

Foreign Language Books Foreign Literature Fate and FortuneLove EntanglementsTragic LoveLove and ChoiceAristocracyMemory of TimeOld-Time SentimentTender SentimentGerman TownFemale Perspective

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.Eaux printanières by Ivan Sergeevich TurgenevAuthor: Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich, 1818-1883,Language: French, Class: PG: Language and Literatures: Slavic (including Russian), Languages and Literature, Release Date: Mar 22, 2011

Editor's review

Spring Torrents is one of Turgenev's finest novellas. Framed as a reminiscence, it tells of a young Russian nobleman who meets and loves an Italian girl in Frankfurt, only to lose her. The tone is lyrical yet restrained, rendering the ardor of youth and life's disillusionment with great subtlety. Turgenev excels at using natural scenery to mirror his characters' inner lives; his descriptions of spring, rivers, and foreign streets are vividly pictorial, and the emotional turns arise not from dramatic conflict but from detail and the passage of time. This edition is a French translation released as an eBook by Project Gutenberg, suitable as an introduction to Turgenev's shorter fiction and for readers who wish to experience the lyrical tradition of nineteenth-century Russian literature through a foreign-language text. Read slowly, attend to the narrator's backward glance at the past, and notice how the theme of youth as flowing water settles into concrete scenes.

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Reading tips

  1. Read through once for the narrative rhythm, then revisit the opening frame and its echo in the ending.
  2. Keep pen and paper handy to mark passages of scenery and see how setting mirrors mood.
  3. If French is difficult, read alongside a Chinese translation and compare the tone.
  4. After finishing, write a short piece on 'missing out' to sort through your emotional response.

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

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or French? This is a French translation released as an eBook by Project Gutenberg; the text is in French, not Chinese. Readers with limited French are advised to use a Chinese translation alongside it, or to familiarize themselves with the plot before tackling the original.
I haven't read Turgenev. Can I start with this? Yes. It is a short novella with a clear narrative thread, a good entry point to Turgenev. Read it first for the story, then attend to the lyrical descriptions and the retrospective perspective; there is no need to rush into literary-historical placement.
What should I keep in mind when reading the eBook? The Gutenberg edition is a free public-domain eBook, formatted mainly as plain text and possibly lacking the layout of a printed book. Use reading software that allows font adjustment, and note chapter breaks to avoid fatigue from long paragraphs.

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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.