SOURCE: Brouwer, Sander. “Turgenev's Sportsman's Sketches as an Artistic Whole.” In Semantic Analysis of Literary Texts, edited by Eric De Haard, Thomas Langerak, and Willem G. Weststeijn, pp. 67-84. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1990.

In the following essay, Brouwer emphasizes The Sportsman's Sketches as an artistic whole through the collection's unifying themes.

1.

When acquainting ourselves with the critical literature on stories from The Sportsman's Sketches, we soon discover that, although this work is among Turgenev's most eulogized and most discussed, investigations into its artistic nature, into the poetics of the work as a whole, are rare and unsatisfying.¹ The collection is traditionally regarded as a pamphlet in favour of the emancipation of the serfs. When the artistic qualities of the book are discussed, usually only the descriptions of nature are paid attention to, especially the lyrical qualities of Turgenev's prose. But nowhere is the collection treated as an artistic whole.

An...