A Sportsman's Notebook

by Ivan Turgenev

  And how delicious the same forest is in late autumn, when woodcock are on the wing! They do not lurk in the innermost recesses: you must seek them along the forest skirts. There is no wind, no sun, no light or shade, no movement, no sound; the soft air is drenched with the smell of autumn, redolent as the smell of wine; a fine mist hangs in the distance over the yellow fields. Through the bare brown limbs of the trees you see the mild featureless pallor of the sky; here and there the last golden leaves are still hanging on the lime trees. The damp earth is springy underfoot; the tall withered blades of grass never stir; long threads glitter on the faded turf. You breathe in peace with every breath, yet a strange unrest comes upon the spirit. You walk along the forest edge, you watch your dog, but all the time images and faces of the beloved, dead or alive, keep coming to mind; impressions that have slumbered for years suddenly spring to life; the imagination hovers and darts hither and thither like a bird, and all the memories it evokes move and stand so vividly before your eyes. At times the heart trembles, beats loudly, and yearns forward passionately; at times it plunges into a world of memory beyond recall. All your life unwinds as smoothly and swiftly as a scroll; all your past, all your emotions, all your faculties, all your soul, are yours to command. There is nothing around to disturb you—no sun, no wind, no sound . . .

  Or take the autumn day that is clear and chilly, after a frosty morning, when the birch, all golden like a tree in a fairy-story, stands out delicately against the pale-blue sky; when the low sun has no more warmth in it, but shines out clearer than in summer; when the small poplar-wood sparkles from end to end, as if the trees found relief and exhilaration in standing naked; when there is still the whiteness of hoar-frost in the bottom of the valleys and a cool breeze is stirring faintly and blowing the fallen crumpled leaves; when on the river the blue waves rush joyfully past, gently rocking the geese and duck that float dreamily on them. From the distance comes the hammer of a watermill, half-hidden among the willows, and above it pigeons wheel swiftly, their colors shifting and changing in the brilliant air . . .

  Delicious too, although not loved by sportsmen, are the misty days of summer. On such days shooting is impossible: the bird that flies up from underfoot vanishes at once in the whitish cloud of stationary mist. But how still, how inexpressibly still a world it is! Everything is awake and silent. You pass a tree—it does not stir: it is just standing at its ease. Through the fine vapor, which is evenly diffused in the air, a long dark stripe looms up before you. You take it for a nearby wood; you approach—and the wood turns into a high ridge of wormwood on a boundary fence. Above you and all around—everywhere there is mist . . . But now a breeze stirs lightly—a patch of pale-blue sky shows up faintly through the thinning vapor, which seems turned into smoke. Suddenly a golden-yellow ray breaks through, floods down in a long beam, strikes on fields, fixes on a wood—and then the whole scene clouds over again. For a long time this struggle continues; but how unspeakably bright and magnificent is the day, when the light finally triumphs, and the last waves of sun-warmed mist roll down and spread out, flat as linen, or else coil up and vanish in the blue and tender radiance of the heaven . . .

  Or perhaps you have decided to visit an outlying field in the steppes. For about ten versts you have threaded your way along by-roads—and here, at last, is the highway. Past unending processions of country carts, past little inns, each with its wide-open gates and its well and its samovar hissing under the lean-to roof—from one village to another, over limitless fields, past lines of green hemp-bushes, far, far away you drive. Magpies flutter from one willow to the next. Peasant-women with long rakes in their hands plod towards the fields; a man in a threadbare nankeen coat, with a satchel of birch-bark slung over his shoulder, trudges wearily by; a landowner’s heavy travelling coach, drawn by six stalwart, well-broken horses, rolls towards you. Out of the window sticks the corner of a pillow, and behind, holding on by a cord to his perch athwart the foot-board, on a mat-bag, sits a footman in a great-coat, spattered to the eyebrows with mud. Here is the local market-town, with its crooked little houses, its endless fences, its stone mansions untenanted by their merchant owners, its ancient bridge spanning the deep river-bed. On, on! . . . The steppe-country is approaching. You look round from the hill-top—and what a view meets your eyes! Round, low hills, ploughed and sown to the summit, roll away in sweeping waves; valleys choked with bushes wind between them. Oblong islands of woodland are scattered here and there. Narrow tracks run from village to village; churches gleam whitely; a stream sparkles among willow bushes, its course broken in four places by dams; a file of bustard stands out far away in the fields; a little old manor house, surrounded by its outbuildings, its orchard and threshing-floor, nestles beside a small pond. Farther and ever farther you drive. The hills grow smaller and smaller—there is hardly a tree in sight. And here, at last, is the interminable, frontierless steppe!

  Or on a winter’s day, to go out hare-shooting through the deep snow-drifts, to inhale the sharp, frosty air, to screw your eyes unwittingly against the fine, dazzling glare from the soft snow, to revel in the green tinge of the sky above the reddish branches of the forest! . . .

  Or the first days of spring, the glittering, melting time, when through the dense steam that rises from the thawing snow there begins to steal the smell of warm soil; when, on the thawed patches of earth, under the slanting rays of the sun, the larks sing confidently, and with a cheerful, bustling roar the flood-waters roll from gully to gully . . .

  But now it is time to stop. It is fitting that I should have been speaking of spring; in spring, partings are easy—in spring, even the happy feel drawn far away . . . Reader, farewell! I wish you eternal good-fortune.

  About the Author

  IVAN TURGENEV was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator, and popularizer of Russian literature in the West whose notable works include Fathers and Sons and A Month in the Country.

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  Copyright

  A SPORTSMAN’S NOTEBOOK. Introduction copyright © 1992 by David Campbell. Preface © 2020 by Daniyal Muennuddin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Translated from the Russian by Charles and Natasha Hepburn.

  Cover design by Allison Saltzman

  Cover art © Kazuko Nomoto

  Originally published in 1992 by Everyman’s Library, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

  FIRST ECCO PAPERBACK EDITION PUB
LISHED 2020.

  Digital Edition JANUARY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-296848-7

  Version 11212019

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-296847-0

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  * Khor in Russian means “polecat.” —Translators.

  * Nightingale fanciers will recognize these terms: they refer to the most beautiful modulations in the bird’s song. —Author.

  * “Fog.” —Translators.

  * “Trifon” is roughly the equivalent of “Cuthbert.” —Translators.

  * The well-known writer of fables.—Translators.

  * This is what the peasants in our part of the country call an eclipse. —Author.

  * The superstition about “Trishka” probably derives from the legend of Antichrist. —Author.

  * Horses grow fat quickly on bran and salt.—Author.

  * Dialect version of “Mtsensk,” the name of a town in Orel province. —Translators.

  * In 1840, in spite of the severest frost, no snow fell until the very end of December; vegetation froze to death, and many fine oak-woods were ruined, in this pitiless winter. It is difficult to replace them: the productive power of the earth is visibly failing; on the plots of ground that have been “lustrated” (walked round with icons), instead of the noble trees that stood there before, birches and aspens are growing like weeds; we have not yet learned how to plant trees scientifically. —Author.

  * The people of Orel call eyes “peepers” in the same way as they call a mouth a “gobbler.” —Author.

  * The inhabitants of Polesya have a name for incredulity and suspicion. —Author.

  * Sakhar Medovich—“Sugar son of Honey.” —Translators.

  * Rickets. —Translators.

  * The lowest rank. “A hen is no bird, a woman no human being, an ensign no officer.” —Translators.