SOURCE: Traill, Nancy H. “Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev: Tentative Beginnings.” In Possible Worlds of the Fantastic: The Rise of the Paranormal in Fiction, pp. 74-104. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Traill discusses elements of the paranormal and the supernatural in Turgenev's fiction.

If the transformations in Dickens's fantastic tales correspond roughly to the order in which they were written, the same cannot be said of Turgenev's. Where Dickens moved fairly consistently towards the paranormal mode, Turgenev juggled with a variety of modes. For instance, in ‘Knock! … Knock! … Knock! …’ [‘Stuk! … Stuk! … Stuk! …’] (1871), two rather primitive supernatural incidents are, respectively, disauthenticated and made ambiguous. Yet the story appeared after ‘An Unhappy Girl’ [‘Neschastnayal’] (1869), where there is a suggestion of the paranormal in the dénouement. In ‘Faust’ (1856), a very early tale, the secondary plot exemplifies the paranormal mode; it is concerned with the nature of a special...