SOURCE: Frost, Edgar L. “Hidden Truths: The Subtle Imagery of ZIVYI MOSI.” Slavic and East European Journal 36, no. 1 (spring 1992): 36-56.

In the following essay, Frost examines the imagery in “Living Relics,” maintaining that “Turgenev's craftsmanship in weaving a complex network of subtle images merits fuller attention than it has heretofore received.”

In December of 1873, Turgenev dug around in some of his old papers and came up with something he described as “very short and bordering on not very good” (Turgenev, 606). Within a few weeks, however, the author had revised “Living Relics” (“Zuvyi mоsu,” 1874) and had a rough copy ready. His change of heart had come about, he said in a letter to the poet Polonskij, because the work might serve as an illustration of “Russian long-suffering,” which happened to fit the tone of a volume planned at the time to aid peasants suffering from famine (Turgenev, 606). And...