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Download this text: Rudin
Customer Review: non-essential Turgenev
_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. ken32
Customer Review: Sad tale of early existentialist-'hero' in 19th century Russ
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.
Customer Review: Self-deception and a facade we place between us and reality
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.
Customer Review: Second reading, twenty years later
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.
Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
Customer Review: Superb. Rudin illustrates is one of the greatest portraits of man ever written.
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.
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