Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) - photo 1
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) - photo 2
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) - photo 3
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) - photo 4

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883)

Lot 187
15.12.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
£ 100
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1108987
Lot 187 | Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883)
Estimate value
£ 60 000 – 90 000
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883)
Autograph manuscript signed ('Iv. Turgenev') of his novella История лейтенанта Ергунова (Lieutenant Ergunov's Story), [Baden-Baden, c. February 1867]
In Russian. 77 pages, 216 x 134mm, original pagination, on the rectos only of bifolia (the last leaf a singleton), blue paper, lightly-revised fair copy with occasional cancellations, emendations and additions, each leaf stamped with numbers 'Côte 25e / 289e [- 327e] Pièce' for Turgenev's posthumous inventory. Provenance: Sotheby's, 16 May 1991, lot 145 (unsold: acquired after sale).

The complete fair-copy manuscript for this novella with themes of naivety and sexual tensions. Lieutenant Ergunov is a retired naval office who tells a remarkable story about his youth, when in trying to help a young woman who claims she has been robbed he is drawn into an increasingly complex entanglement which culminates with him being himself robbed and beaten.

'...That evening Kuzma Vasilyevich Ergunov told us his story again. He repeated it punctually once a month, and we listened to it each time with new pleasure, although we knew it almost by heart, with all its details ...'

The composition of Lieutenant Ergunov began in 1866 (it is referred to in a letter of 9/21 April): Turgenev worked on it intermittently alongside the novel Smoke, and recorded that it was completed at Baden-Baden on 2/14 February, with the last 22 pages written in an 11-hour burst of creative energy: on the following day he wrote to Pauline Viardot that he was in the process of making a fair copy which would be 80 pages (likely the present manuscript). Turgenev read the completed story to a group of fellow-writers in Saint Petersburg two weeks later, and after a series of revisions over the following months it was published in the Moscow literary journal Russkiy Vestnik (Russian Messenger) in January 1868 and three months later in a French translation supervised by the author in the Revue des deux mondes. Turgenev, who had himself described the novella to Pauline Viardot as 'ce recit bizarre', was disappointed by critical reaction to the story, which tended to view it as too 'anecdotal' and impersonal.

The present manuscript is one of three known autographs: the others are a 7-page draft for the opening of the novel and a fair copy of 54 pages, both held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (see André Mazon, Manuscrits parisiens d'Ivan Tourguenev (1930), pp. 68 and 71). The revisions to the manuscript range from the cancellation of phrases or lines of text to a substantial marginal addition to chapter XIX (p.54).
Place of origin:Russia
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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