A Sportsman's Sketches (; also known as A Sportman's Notebook, The Hunting Sketches and Sketches from a Hunter's Album) is an 1852 cycle of short stories by Ivan Turgenev. It was the first major writing that gained him recognition.
This work is part of the Russian realist tradition in that the narrator is usually an uncommitted observer of the people he meets.
Writing and publication Turgenev based many of these short stories on his own observations while hunting at his mother's estate at Spasskoye, in Oryol, where he learned of the abuse of the peasants and the injustices of the Russian system that constrained them. The frequent abuse of Turgenev by his mother certainly had an effect on this work.
The stories were first published singly in The Contemporary between 1847 and 1851 before appearing in 1852 in book form. Turgenev was about to give up writing when the first story, "Khor and Kalinich", was well received. The work as a whole actually led to Turgenev's house arrest (part of the reason, the other being his epitaph to Nikolai Gogol) at Spasskoye.
The stories Khor and Kalinych
On an excursion in Kaluga, the narrator makes the acquaintance of a fellow landowner and hunter named Polutykin. Despite Polutykin's solicitude, the narrator seems to prefer the company of two of his peasants: Khor, who is a capable man with a large family, and Kalinych, who is the opposite of Khor, keeps bees, and accompanies Polutykin on hunting trips. The narrator is impressed by these men's differing tempers and their friendship. In a speech in 1860, Turgenev explained the importance of this dichotomy of characters he called "Hamlet-like" and "Quixotic". Though the narrator appears to be an uncommitted observer, he states that he learned a great deal from Khor, and Turgenev makes an implicit argument against serfdom.
Yermolay and the Miller’s Wife This story introduces Yermolay. He is a serf belonging to the narrator's neighbor and a skillful hunter who accompanies the narrator on hunting trips. After hunting woodcock into the night, they stay in a hut belonging to a miller whose wife is known to Yermolay. The narrator realizes that he knows of her as well, and recounts the mistreatment she endured from her former master Zverkov when she wished to get married.
Raspberry Water At a spring called Raspberry Water (which did exist and still exists in Russia) the narrator meets two peasants, the impoverished Styopushka and the more prosperous Tuman (or Foggy). In realist fashion, the narrator maintains his distance and we are given Tuman's fond recollections of his former master, who lived grand style until he was ruined by his mistresses. At the end the three men are joined by another peasant who tells them that his son has died and his master has angrily refused to decrease his rent.
The District Doctor Struck with fever in a small village, the narrator is visited by a district doctor who tells him a story of how he fell in love with a dying patient. The doctor relates how he spent several days in the sick woman's household, cut off by reason of the spring thaw. The late father of the family is said to have been a writer and the family is also isolated from society by reason of their poverty and good education. The doctor cannot help her but he is moved by her beauty and trust in him, and he feels compelled to stay optimistic in front of the family. Before dying, the patient tells her family that they are betrothed. The doctor says that he has since married a merchant's daughter. The narrator tries to comfort the doctor, and they gamble for low stakes into the night.
My Neighbor Radilov The narrator (again with Yermolay) is hunting for partridges when he is confronted by the landowner Radilov, of whose existence the narrator has hitherto been ignorant. Radilov invites him to dinner. The narrator appreciates his warmth but is otherwise perplexed by him and his household, which includes his elderly mother, a poor hanger on who plays violin, and girl who appears young enough to be a daughter but turns out to be the sister of Radilov's late wife. Radilov describes his wife's death and how he didn't shed a tear until he saw a fly crawl over her eye. A week after this visit, Radilov runs away with his young sister in law, scandalizing the neighborhood and greatly distressing his mother.
Farmer Ovsyanikov The narrator visits with Ovsyanikov, an elderly, conservative, and highly respected member of the lower class of landholders. Prompted to talk about the "good old days", Ovsyanikov says that the narrator's grandfather stole land from his family by force, yet he also praises the man's hunting dog and the lifestyle of the old grandees. Oskyanikov says that the rich are sometimes easier to deal with now, but criticizes the activism of his unemployed nephew Mitya.
Lgov
Yermolay and the narrator go hunting duck and realize that they need to borrow a boat. With the help of a pretentious and incompetent hunter named Vladimir, they meet Suchok, or Old Knot. Suchok is employed as a fisherman, though he admits there are no fish in the river, and he lends them a decrepit boat. Eliciting Suchok's life story, the narrator learns that he has been, according to his masters' whims, a coachman, hunter, cobbler, coffee boy, a cook, and even an actor. In the excitement of the hunt, they sink the boat, and Yermolay leads them to shore filthy after great difficulty.
Bezhin Lea The story begins with a highly stylized and poetic depiction of the beauty of the countryside during the day. The narrator, in one of his hunting expeditions, gets lost in the woods. As night approaches, he comes across a clearing, where he meets up with five peasant boys near a fire who are grazing the horses. The narrator pretends to be asleep and the boys forget he is there and start exchanging scary tales with each other. This story juxtaposes the natural beauty of the world with the terrifying essence of the “supernatural”.
Kasyan from the Beautiful Lands
While in a carriage the narrator comes across a funeral procession and goes to Yudin village to get a new axle when theirs breaks. There he meets Kasyan, a fifty-year-old dwarf who lives in the village and who is a yurodivy. He takes them to get a new axle and the narrator notices how at one he seems with his environment and incredibly generous. Kasyan establishes his hatred of established society through his glorification of the world of folklore and faith.
Bailiff Story about the bailiff (Sofron) of a landowner friend of the narrator who is more in control of the land than Arkady Penochkin. He uses the peasants and steals their money from loans. This story is one of the most vivid examples of the peasantry's exploitation.
The Office The narrator comes upon a small hut and travels to a village after speaking with an old man there. He comes across a run-down shack that is the main office of the local landowner. He stays there and overhears the head clerk abusing his powers and learns how he uses Losnyakova to abuse the peasants, for example sending away the lover of a young man so they cannot get married. The main idea here is the presentation of the ridiculous bureaucracy created to control the peasants.
Loner At night in a droshky, the narrator comes across a man, Foma, in the forest who watches over his landowner's property so peasants don't steal wood. He learns the man's wife left him and their children alone and finds his home incredibly depressing. Foma eventually hears a peasant chopping down a tree and they go out to confront him. The forester takes him to his home and threatens to turn him into the landowner. The narrator tries to buy the peasant's wood so he can be set free, and though they fight at first, Foma eventually agrees and pushes the man out the door. Unlike the previous stories, this work was not featured in “The Contemporary” and was only later added to the sketches in 1852.
Two Landowners Story of two different landowners the narrator knows, with descriptions of mistreatment of the peasants including beatings and descriptions of their miserable huts. This again, gives the reader more callous examples of the treatment of the peasantry.
Lebedyan Story about a village where the narrator comes across the horse fair. Of particular interest is the lieutenant Khlopakov, who uses catch phrases out of context regardless if they sound strange, which amuses his friend Zhukov. The narrator looks at horses and decides to purchase one, which ends up being lame but he gives up trying to get his money back for it when he realizes the seller's scheme. Turgenev's intentions here were to display the typical events at a local fair.
Tatyana Borisovna and her Nephew Story about the modest landowner Tatyana whom everyone loves because she is so generous. In spite of being illiterate she is generous to everyone and does not care for typical dealings that landowners spend their time on and does not care for other women landowners in her area. In the story her nephew Andryusha (an orphan) comes to live with her and loves to draw. He eventually gains the interest of Pyotr Benevolensky, a local collegiate counsellor who is a minor acquaintance of Tatyana, who then takes him to St. Petersburg to be trained in art. When he returns, after asking his aunt for money through the mail several times, she finds he has become Benevolensky and is corrupted. He is fat and annoying and spends his time poorly singing words to songs written by Glinka. Her friends stop visiting her because he is so annoying.
Death In this story the narrator opens with a hunting story concerning his neighbor. They find the trees in the area dying with many fallen onto the ground because of a terrible frost (this is an actual event from Russia in 1840). After this he and his friend come upon a peasant who they are told has been smashed by a tree and they watch him die. This reminds the narrator of several stories he remembers about dying and he uses them to explain how the Russian character presents itself when dying. Each character continues as if performing a ritual, not lamenting or even caring. One old woman, with her final breath, reaches for a ruble under her pillow to pay the priest who says her last rites. Here Turgenev appears to be commenting on the isolation of human personality in the face of nature.
Singers
The narrator comes to the small and run-down village of Kolotovka, which is bisected by a ravine, and visits a tavern. There, a singing contest is about to begin between the local Yashka the Turk and a booth-keeper from Zhizdry. The booth-keeper goes first, singing a lively dance tune embellished with endless technically impressive flourishes, and is greeted with an outburst of excited praise. Yashka then sings, shy and trembling at first, but gradually gaining fire and breadth, and with a “depth of passion, and youth and sweetness and a sort of fascinating, careless, pathetic melancholy.” His voice sounds with “a spirit of truth and fire, a Russian spirit,” leaving the spectators speechless after he’s finished, until the booth-keeper concedes and rushes out of the room. The narrator leaves the tavern—”afraid of spoiling the impression”—but looks in later to see an animated but cheerless drunken scene. The story ends when he walks away, and hears peasant boys calling to each other in the night.
Pyotr Petrovich Karataev