The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Novellas

by Ivan Turgenev, Michael Pursglove (Translator)

Driven to his deathbed by an incurable disease, the thirty-year-old impoverished gentleman Chulkaturin decides to write a diary looking back on his short life. After describing his youthful disillusionment and his family's fall from grace and loss of status, the narrative focuses on his love for Liza, the daughter of a senior civil servant, his rivalry with the dashing Prince N. and his ensuing humiliation. These pages helped establish the archetype of the “superfluous man”, a recurring figure in nineteenth-century Russian literature.

First published in 1850, 'The Diary of a Superfluous Man' was initially censored by the authorities, as some of its passages were deemed too critical of Russian society. This volume also includes two other masterly novellas, also touching on the theme of disappointed love: 'Asya' and 'First Love'.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Russia, Fiction, Russian Literature, Literature, 19th Century

224 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2004

About the author

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (Cyrillic: Иван Сергеевич Тургенев) was a novelist, poet, and dramatist, and now ranks as one of the towering figures of Russian literature. His major works include the short-story collection A Sportsman’s Sketches (1852) and the novels Rudin (1856), Home of the Gentry (1859), On the Eve (1860), and Fathers and Sons (1862).

These works offer realistic, affectionate portrayals of the Russian peasantry and penetrating studies of the Russian intelligentsia who were attempting to move the country into a new age. His masterpiece, Fathers and Sons, is considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.

Turgenev was a contemporary with Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. While these wrote about church and religion, Turgenev was more concerned with the movement toward social reform in Russia.

Reviews

[MihaElla · Rating 5 out of 5]

From 20th March to 1st April, 18**. That’s it, no more no less than 12 days! The full period contained by the diary of a superfluous man, by his name Chulkaturin, aged around 30’ and born into a fairly rich landowning family (which of course doesn’t exist by the time he starts writing this extremely short memoir) and following precisely his last days, not necessarily as activities-based, but more as regards his quick flash-back on childhood, youth, first love and current situation…

It is a really very depressing story just because he is starting by saying: So let me tell the story of my whole life to myself. A splendid idea! In the face of death it’s the decent thing to do, and it won’t offend anymore. Here goes.



Well, now tell me, am I not a superfluous man? In all this saga have I not played the part of the superfluous man? […] But what about me? What did I get involved in? What a stupid fifth wheel on the cart I was! It’s a bitter, bitter pill to swallow. But then, as the barge-haulers say: “One more time, just one more time.” Just one more day, and then another, and there’ll be neither bitterness nor sweetness for me…

No doubt I wholeheartedly agree with the narrator of this diary, gospodin Chulkaturin, in the sense that he was fully right with the outcome as regards his life quality: Just one more day, and then another, and there’ll be neither bitterness nor sweetness for me…
Each and every page is filled with similar disheartening comments about himself. So sad! One can’t help saying, as per philosopher’s quote, How’s one to know what one doesn’t know?

There is an increasing awareness of the superfluous man—or, more accurately, hyperawareness—of a powerful expression of a poignant conflict, that turns very painful as he becomes a most bitter character whit the passing of years…The superfluous man embodies a particular problem (or more, why not) that was tearing apart a particular culture at a particular time, and it is for this reason that he must be understood in historical context…Nothing is as simple as it seems at first look :)

I was checking on Wikipedia and there is even a sort of definition of the superfluous man:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfl...
I am very curious now and in fact resolved to read more about this ‘concept’.

This collection contains 3 novellas and only The Diary of a Superfluous Man was new to me, the other two, Asya and First Love , I had read before, but I will use this occasion for a re-read. I recall I enjoyed them very much.

[Jonathan O'Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

ENGLISH: This book contains five early stories by Turgenev. Although most are quite good, I prefer specially the first (which gives title to the collection) and Yakov Pasinkov, which gives a proof that it is not so difficult to write a story around a good person.

Also, both these stories provides good examples of Turgenev's obsession about unhappy, usually non-returned loves, which fill most of his writing.

ESPAÑOL: Este libro contiene cinco de los primeros cuentos de Turgenev. Aunque son bastante buenos, me gusta más el primero (que da título a la colección), así como Yakov Pasinkov, que demuestra que no es tan difícil escribir sobre una buena persona.

Además, estos dos cuentos proporcionan buenos ejemplos de la obsesión de Turgenev por los amores infelices, generalmente no correspondidos, que llenan la mayor parte de sus escritos.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I didn't think this was an outstanding collection of stories, I did enjoy Turgenev's style (which, as some have said, may have been Constance Garnett's style, as she was the translator for this edition), and also the exposure to this author. I'd tried Fathers and Sons years ago, and I don't think I had the patience--at any rate, I didn't think I liked Turgenev because of that, but now I'm interested in trying some of his other works (and F & S again too).

All five stories have a significant element of Romanticism to them, and four deal with the vicissitudes of love--mostly of the 'you love her, but she loves him, and he loves somebody else, you just can't win' variety. By the end of the collection, it seemed to be getting kind of stale, but that's not uncommon in single-author story collections, at least for me.

I'm glad this was my first exposure to Turgenev--reading some of his better known works might have soured me on this if I'd read it afterwards. As it is, I'm looking forward to more.

[Steven R. Kraaijeveld · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The light exhalation of an insignificant flower outlives all the joys and all the sorrows of a man—outlives the man himself." (102)

This edition includes three novellas by Turgenev: The Diary of a Superfluous Man, Asya, and First Love. The first and last are two of my favorite works by Turgenev; I own a number of different editions (especially of First Love, which I have read several times). I really just bought this particular volume only for Asya, a good translation of which has been strangely difficult to find in English. Asya is a love story, but it's ultimately also about life (aren't love stories always?); about basing decisions on reason or by giving in to our feelings, about opportunity and regret, about purpose and restlessness, and so on.

Interesting, I have seen a particular line repeated in relation to Asya, namely that Tolstoy considered it to be one of Turgenev's two best stories. On the contrary, in the introduction to this edition, Michael Pursglove writes about the reception of Asya that "Lev Tolstoy used even stronger language [than the critical Alexander Druzhinin], dismissing 'Asya' […] as 'garbage'." These assessments clearly cannot both be true. Perhaps there is a clue in the following observation by Pursglove: "This did not prevent [Tolstoy], however, from apparently incorporating aspects of Asya in his depiction of Natasha Rostova in War and Peace."

[Valentina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had really missed reading some russian lit and Turgenev's always a good choice. This edition contains 3 novellas, all of which deal with failed or doomed young love:

1) The Diary of a Superfluous Man: this one reminded me in many ways of Eliot's "The Lifted Veil," but without all the supernatural events.

"In the face of eternity all is vanity, so they say. Yes indeed, but in that case eternity itself is vanity."

2) Asya: this one was my favorite of the three! Such a beautiful psychological portrait of the characters accompanied by impeccable writing.

"The light exhalation of an insignificant flower outlives all the joys and all the sorrows of a man -- outlives the man himself."

3) First Love: perhaps Turgenev's most famous piece of short fiction, and I can see why! That last page is very strange and mysterious; it was written almost as a warning, or a prophecy of bleak things to come. No wonder it sparked so much controversy at its time of publication. The story's revelation was always meant to be quite predictable, but it still shocked me when I read it, and to think that it's based on Turgenev's real-life experience.... yikes. Tough blow, bud.

"Oh youth! Youth! [...] You say: look at me -- I alone am alive! But with you too the days are hastening past, without trace and numberless, and everything in you vanishes, like wax in the sun, like snow. And perhaps the whole secret of your charm consists not in the possibility of doing everything but in the possibility of thinking you can do everything -- consists precisely in the fact that you scatter to the wind forces that you would not be able to use for anything else. Perhaps it consists in the fact that each of us seriously considers themselves spendthrift, seriously supposes they have the right to say: 'Oh, what I could have done if I had not wasted time!'"

[dB · Rating 5 out of 5]

My rating is based cumulatively on all five short stories, not just "The Diary of a Superfluous Man." I found four of five of them to be outstanding, with only "A Tour in the Forest" to be but average.

[Thom Hamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compared to his more realist works, such as Fathers and Sons (1862) and especially A Sportsman’s Sketches (1852), Turgenev’s Diary of a Superfluous Man (1850) seems more romantic, in the Wertherian sense of the word.[1] As it is one of his earliest books, perhaps his romanticism stems from its relative proximity to the romantic period. Claiming that “[l]ove is a sickness”, it tells a tale of unreciprocated, imaginary romance, social exclusion and jealousy, the melancholic tempest of a heart broken – or worse, a heart never whole in the first place.

Be that as it may, the romanticism present here already possesses a typically Turgenevian sort of realism, as it rejects the cathartic effects of pathetic expression: “Sentimental outbreaks are like liquorice; when first you suck it, it’s not bad, but afterwards it leaves a very nasty taste in your mouth.” There is no purpose to suffering, no beauty in it, and scarcely any escape from it. It is for this reason that this book can properly be called the bastard love child of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and – pardon the anachronism – Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground (1884).

"With only a few days left to live, the young man’s outlook on life turns backward. He recounts the most significant events in his life, largely dominated by his unrequited infatuation with Liza. Thus, he comes to recognize his superfluity or, rather, the superfluous quality of anyone’s existence. Only in death, then, does humanity become sufficient, precisely enough: 'Sinking into nothing, I cease to be superfluous.'"

This superfluity suggests a sense of existential alienation, which can be defined as the heartfelt belief of the negligibility of one’s existence in the spatiotemporal vastness of the universe. The superfluous man feels powerless. Thus, this work anticipates the Pascallian nihilism of Bazarov in Fathers and Sons:

"I’m thinking: my parents have a pretty good life! At sixty my father manages to keep busy, talks about ‘palliative’ measures, sees patients, treats his peasants generously—in a word, has a fine time. And my mother’s all right: her day’s full of all sorts of activities, ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs,’ she’s no time to think; while […] I think: here I lie under a haystack… The tiny space I occupy is so small compared to the rest of space, where I am not and where things have nothing to do with me; and the amount of time in which I get to live my life is so insignificant compared to eternity, where I’ve never been and won’t ever be… Yet in this atom, this mathematical point blood circulates, a brain functions and desires something as well… How absurd! What nonsense!"[2]

Compare this to Blaise Pascal’s thoughts on the brevity and arbitrariness of our highly specific existence, articulated in his Pensées (1669):

"When I consider the short span of my life absorbed into the preceding and subsequent eternity, [like the memory of a one-day guest (Wisd. 5: 15)], the small space which I fill and even can see, swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which knows nothing of me, I am terrified, and surprised to find myself here rather than there, for there is no reason why it should be here rather than there, why now rather than then."[3]

In The Diary of a Superfluous Man (1850), however, the cosmic insignificance is conjoined with a sense of alienation festering on the rejections in the social and romantic sphere. Protagonist Tchulkaturin has fifth-wheeled his way through life, stifling the cart in the process. Worse than unnecessary, the superfluous man becomes burdensome. This evokes an interpretive dilemma: which kind of alienation is the antecedent? Social superfluity or superfluity in the cosmos?

As Turgenev entertains both socialist and existentialist sympathies, the answer is far from straightforward. Perhaps neither is correct. It seems as though the sources of superfluity in Turgenev’s oeuvre are coexistent, engaging with each other in a downward spiral of estrangement.

REFERENCES
[1] Vytas Dukas and Richard H. Lawson, ‘Werther and Diary of a Superfluous Man’, Comparative Literature 21, no. 2 (1969): 146–54, https://doi.org/10.2307/1769943.

[2] Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, trans. Michael R. Katz (W.W. Norton, 1862), 82.

[3] Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford University Press, 2008), 102.

(Published on my website.)

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

“ The Diary of a Superfluous Man”, by Turgenev is touching, magnificent, the superfluous man in a superlative story. From March 18th, 1820 to the night of April 1sr and 2nd, the superfluous man tells us and convinces us of his superfluousness. The story that he tells,of his unrequited love, his misreads, and his hopes are all enshrouded but what he tells us in the very first lines-“ The Doctor has just left me. I’ve finally got some sense out of him! Try as he might, he finally had to come clean. Yes, I’ll soon die, very soon.
The superfluous man- “ I grew up in bad circumstances and without joy .... What sort of a man am I ? People may retort that no one’s asking.- I agree. But I’m going to die after all, I’m going to die, and in face of death it’s surely forgivable to want to know what sort of chap I was, isn’t it?....I have to confess one thing: I’ve been completely superfluous in this world of ours, or to put it another way, a bird of no account”.
And within this “ diary” of perhaps three weeks, the superfluous man chooses to tell us of love and emotion, several years ago, when he meets Elizaveta Kirillovna. “ My whole life was radiated with love, every part of it down to the smallest detail...I fell in love with her passionately on the very first day and from the very first day I knew I was in love with her. For three weeks I saw her every day. Those three weeks were the happiest in my life”.
Only to change, all too soon- “If only someone had whispered in my ear at that time: ‘What nonsense my dear chap! None of that’s for you , you know- all you’ve got to wait for is dying alone in some miserable little hovel to the sound of unbearable complaints from an old hag who can’t wait for you to die in order to sell off your boots for a pittance...”. Consider this- “ The misfortune of all solitary and bashful people- bashful, of course, from ambition- is precisely that, though they have eyes to see and even keep them wide open, they see nothing at all or see everything in a false light, just as if they were looking at the world through tinted spectacles”.
And then, rationalization creeps in,”... but solitary men, such as we are, I will say again, are just as incapable of understanding what’s going on before their very eyes. And what’s more- is love really a natural feeling? Is it natural for a man to fall in love”.
And on his penultimate day of these three weeks in March, to the evening of April 1st and 2nd- “O my God, my God! I know I’m dying...My heart, so ready and willing to love, will soon stop beating. Will it fall quiet forever without once having known happiness or once having expanded under a sweet burden of joy?Alas, that’s impossible , impossible, I’m certain... If now, at least, on the verge of death- for death surely, is a holy thing, it uplifts all creation-...”

[Andreas · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is interesting how the writer portrays a man whose dying days are numbered at the height of 19th-century Russian society. While Chulkaturin reflects on his impending death, he relives memories of his involvement with Liza and a prince.
Weakened by an incurable disease, the 30-year-old begins to write a diary recalling his short life. Readers follow the character's youthful disillusionment and his family's fall from grace. Specialists say Turgenev helped build the archetype of the extra man that became commonplace in the Russian of that century. This volume also includes 'Asya' and 'First Love.' Great book.

[Laura]

Free download available at Project Gutenberg.

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. Turgenev is still my favorite Russian author, not counting Nabokov.

[Maddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't read the last story or maybe last two. Liked the first one, found the others kind of blurred together. Didn't really get the point about the one set in the boreal forest.

[Nooks Full Of Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 🌠🌠🌠

'First Love' was my favourite

[André Filipe · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, some interesting literature but it can become a bit slow after a while...

[Mohamed Qayser · Rating 5 out of 5]

peak russian experience, read like Dostoevsky but with less attractive prose (ironic)

[Vasil Krastanov Krastanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Asyq e 10/10, First love okolo 7/10 a The diary of a superfluous man e kym 5/10. Turgenev me kefi.

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Diary of a Superluous Man: ⭐⭐
Asya: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
First Love: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

[Helena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite interesting at the beginning.

[Freigeist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Turgenev is one of histories most underrated authors.

[Erin]

"The Diary of a Superfluous Man"; "A Tour in the Forest"; "Yakov Pasinkov"; "Andrei Kolosov"; "A Correspondence"