SOURCE: Seeley, Frank Friedeberg. “Love and the Superfluous Man.” In Turgenev: A Reading of His Fiction, pp. 137-60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Seeley explores the dominant motif of the superfluous man in Turgenev's stories written from 1853 to 1862.

In the decade from 1843 to 1852, superfluous men, or forerunners of the type, appear in only six of Turgenev's literary works (poems, plays, sketches and stories). In only two of the six is the superfluous man indisputably a protagonist, and only in the last of them does the type receive a name. It was only gradually that the type took shape: the earlier specimens are sketched rather than portrayed; but by 1850 we have two portraits in depth: of Rakitin and Chulkaturin. In Turgenev's second creative decade (1853-62) we have a series of studies of superfluous men and their unavailing struggles to make good in life and in love...