A Trip to Polesye

In “A Trip to Polesye,” Turgenev’s years of reflection on Man and Nature come to life. “A Trip to Polesye” is the first work of the writer, in many ways anticipating the philosophical generalizations in such novellas and novels as “Enough,” the novels “Fathers and Sons,” “On the Eve,” and “Poems in Prose.” The novella is especially clearly read in comparison with Turgenev’s article “Hamlet and Don Quixote” (begun in the autumn of the same year, 1856, when “A Trip to Polesye” was already being written). It can serve as a sort of author’s commentary to nearly all of Turgenev’s mature work—and to this novella in particular. When creating images of the Polesye peasants, Turgenev approaches them with universal human criteria: the traits of Hamlet and Don Quixote (in Turgenev’s interpretation) are whimsically interwoven in Egor and Efrem—kind of anti-types.